
Book _.X±j3f^ 
Copyright N?.___ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
"Edited by JOHN H. KERR, D. D. 



THE TEACHING OF JESUS 

CONCERNING 

THE FUTURE LIFE 



Willis Judson Beecher, D. D. 



THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 

CONCERNING 

HIS OWN MISSION. Frank H. Foster. Ready. 
THE^KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE 

CHURCH. Geerhardus Vos. " 

GOD THE FATHER. 

Archibald Thomas Robertson. " 
THE SCRIPTURES. David James Burrell. " 
THE HOLY SPIRIT. Louis B. Crane. " 
CHRISTIAN CONDUCT. Andrew C. 

Zenos " 

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. Gerard B. F. 

Hallock " 

THE FUTURE LIFE. Willis J. Beecher. " 

HIS OWN PERSON. Wayland Hoyt. 

In -preparation. 
JESUS THE TEACHER <• 

A Series of volumes on the "Teachings of Jesus" 

by eminent writers and divines. 

Cloth bound. 12mo. Price 75 cts each postpaid. 

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 



THE TEACHING OF JESUS 



CONCERNING 



THE FUTURE LIFE 



By 

Willis Judson Beecher, D. D. 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

• 150 NASSAU STREET 

NEW YORK 



C^0t 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

NOV 2 1906 

~ CopyrfEtt Entry 

fla i,t fed 

CUSS A XXCnNe, 
COPY B. ' w 






Copyright, 1906. 
By; American Tract Society, 






CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. Our Sources of Information. i 
II. Before Jesus. Ethnical Ideas 

of a Future State. ... 7 

III. Before Jesus. Israelitish 

Ideas of a Future State. . 22 

IV. Jesus Interpreting the Older 

Teachings 38 

V. The Kingdom and the Future 

Life 56 

VI. Salvation and the Future 

Life 66 

VII. Realities in the Future Life. 84 
VIII. Physical Expressions for the 

Future Life 106 

IX. Eternity and Immortality. . . 125 

X. The Resurrection of the Body. 145 

XL The Judgment Day 164 

XII. Cross Examination 179 

Indexes 187 



CHAPTER I 

Our Sources of Information 

/T^ROM His own words, as recorded 
j/* in the Gospels and in a few logia 
extant elsewhere, we may learn 
what Jesus taught concerning a future 
life ; but our sources are not limited to 
these. In addition we have accounts of 
His life and personal experiences, and 
some of these bear upon the life that fol- 
lows death — particularly His miracles of 
raising the dead, and His manifestations 
of Himself after His own resurrection. 
Further, we may bring into the question 
the teachings which His earliest disci- 



2 The Future Life 

pies promulgated in His name. As they 
went everywhere preaching Christ, their 
preaching was to the effect that He had 
risen from the dead, and that He was to 
be the Judge of men, who also exist in 
a life that follows death. Statements of 
this kind they reiterate and emphasize, 
amplifying them in numberless details. 
It is impossible to think that they were 
wholly mistaken in testifying that these 
were the teachings which Jesus had com- 
mitted to them. So far forth as they 
present a formulated theology, one of its 
staple doctrines is that of a future life, 
and of Jesus as dominating the future life. 
And even more marked, if that were 
possible, is the testimony they give in the 
form of indirect statements and impli- 
cations. Directly and indirectly their 
theme is " Our Saviour Christ Jesus, who 
abolished death, and brought life and in- 
corruption to light through the gospel" 
(II Tim. i. 10). 

In this little volume, the citations from 



Our Sources of Information 3 

other sources than the words of Jesus are 
used only for the light they throw upon 
His teaching. Either they illustrate the 
meaning of the terms in which He ex- 
pressed Himself, or they indicate what 
those who were nearest to Him under- 
stood Him to teach, or in some other 
way they help us to know what He 
taught. 

How to use the Sources 
The records of these sources are 
mostly included in the New Testament, 
though some information may be gleaned 
elsewhere. And the gravest question of 
current criticism is the question how we 
are to use these records. Personally I 
have no doubt that the records are in the 
highest degree trustworthy in their state- 
ments of fact. But I am confronted with 
men who deny this, who affirm that a 
large proportion of the statements are un- 
true, or are true only as ideas and not as 
presenting facts. I desire to say some- 



4 The Future Life 

thing that shall carry conviction to men 
of this way of thinking, and not merely 
to those who already think as I do. 
How can this be accomplished ? 

One who has not given much thought 
to the problem will probably reply : 
Why, the whole thing is very simple ; 
first settle the question of the trustworth- 
iness of your witnesses, and then take 
their testimony. But that is not the 
way they do in a court of justice. They 
take the testimony of the witness first. 
They determine the trustworthiness 
largely by the nature of his testimony 
itself, and by his manner of giving it ; 
and afterward by cross-examination and 
rebuttal and surrebuttal and other proc- 
esses. Suppose we deal in the same 
way with the New Testament writings 
as witnesses concerning the teachings of 
Jesus. 

If some one thinks that it is true, or at 
least may supposably be true, that the 
apostles and evangelists sometimes at- 



Our Sources of Information 5 

tribute to Jesus ideas that He did not hold ; 
that in reporting His ideas they sometimes 
got them mistakenly confused with their 
own ; or that Jesus may sometimes have 
uttered statements which He would 
on second thought have revised, that 
person has a point of view different from 
mine. In case we study together he 
would say that I ought not to expect 
him to adopt my theory of the trust- 
worthiness of the records, not even if 
I regard the trustworthiness as a proven 
fact. But equally he ought not to expect 
me to adopt his theory of the untrust- 
worthiness of the records, not even if he 
regards it as the only up-to-date idea. 
Evidently we must begin by leaving open 
the questions on which we differ. The 
records themselves constitute the one 
undisputed fact in the case. No one 
doubts that this fact exists, and in a 
million of details. Differences of opinion 
concerning its contents and text, however 
numerous, are so unimportant as to be a 



6 The Future Life 

negligible quantity for the purposes now 
in hand. We will begin by simply 
ascertaining what the records say, leaving 
for later consideration the question 
whether the teaching of Jesus concerning 
the future life actually was what the 
records represent it to have been. Of 
course we will use our materials critically, 
but we will remember that an uncritical 
rejection of a statement is as bad as 
an uncritical acceptance of it. By the 
process of carefully inquiring what the 
records say we shall apply to them the 
one test for trustworthiness that is prac- 
tically worth more than all others. By 
accurately understanding what they say 
we shall prepare ourselves to judge 
whether it is characterized by consistency 
and soberness and verisimilitude ; and 
also to judge of the validity of any reasons 
that may be alleged for modifying it 
or refusing to believe it. 



CHAPTER II 

Before Jesus. — Ethnical Ideas of a 
Future State 

/T is sometimes said that Jesus first 
introduced among men the belief 
in a life after death. This is a 
mistake. The belief had previously been 
current, and not in Israel only, but in 
pre- Israelite civilizations. Long before 
Abraham it was a religious doctrine in 
Egypt and Babylonia and elsewhere. In 
His human character Jesus inherited the 
ideas on the subject that had been handed 
down to Him from His predecessors. 
He found in existence certain opinions 

7 



8 The Future Life 

concerning it. We can the better depict 
His teaching if we use these previous 
teachings as a background. 

The Egyptian Book of the Dead 

The most authentic source of informa- 
tion concerning the attitude of early relig- 
ions toward a life after death is probably 
the celebrated Egyptian "Book of the 
Dead."* To get an idea as to what the 
Egyptian priests taught concerning the 
condition of a human being after death, 
one should turn over these volumes, 
should look at the numerous vignettes 
with which the ancient Egyptian docu- 
ments were illustrated, and should read at 
least parts of the translated text. The 
teachings concerning judgment after 
death and punishment and reward and 
conditions of existence are voluminous 
and specific. The teachings are different 

*Now conveniently accessible in more forms than one, and 
especially in the popular edition published by Mr. E. A, Wal- 
lis Budge in 1901, in three small volumes. 



Ethnical Ideas g 

from those to which we Christians are ac- 
customed, though they have many points 
of contact with ours. If one should make 
from them a tabulated scheme of wrongs 
to be avoided and of duties and motives, 
the scheme would be surprisingly in 
agreement with our Christian ethics. 
We feel an approving admiration for 
the ethical intelligence and for the lofty 
religious conceptions that appear, even 
though they are mingled with elements 
less worthy ; and we feel a disapproving 
admiration for the skill in priestcraft that 
permeates and deteriorates the whole. 
Everywhere appears the consciousness 
that a person's own merits, however 
great, do not suffice for obtaining a 
favorable verdict from the judges of the 
dead, but must be supplemented by 
good offices that the priesthood may 
render. Everywhere is the moral that 
in one's lifetime one should be generous 
to the temples as the means of securing 
good fortune after one's death. And 



io The Future Life 

the fact that the scheme was successful, 
that the priests and the temples heaped 
up riches and honors, is sufficient proof 
that the Egyptians believed in the reality 
of the teachings of their religion concern- 
ing the future. 

What was true in the Egyptian religion 
was also true, with the requisite changes 
of terms, in other great early religions. 
In various ages and countries embalming 
has been practised, and has been con- 
nected with the idea of preserving the 
body for the use of the still surviving soul. 
The doctrine of the transmigration of 
souls has been widely and variously held, 
with its implications of a certain kind of 
life after death. 

The World of the Dead 
One of the most universal of human 
conceptions is that of the world of the 
dead. Perhaps this has its origin in a cer- 
tain essential necessity of human thinking. 
Even the crudest materialist, who says 



Ethnical Ideas n 

that thought and feeling are merely the 
transient result of certain conformations 
of matter, and that personality vanishes 
when the body disintegrates, will none 
the less speak of his deceased friend as 
sleeping in the grave, as having gone over 
to the great majority. If we should as- 
sume that death ends all, that neither the 
bodies nor the spirits of the dead are any 
longer in existence, that there is nothing 
teft except certain particles of matter that 
used to be in their bodies but have now 
gone into different organisms ; neverthe- 
less the remembrance of the dead is a real- 
ity, the emotions they stir in us are a real- 
ity, and their influence over us is a reality. 
We are compelled to think of the dead as 
the sources of these realities, and not 
merely as so much decomposing matter 
that has changed or is changing into 
something else. Much more do we think 
in this way if we hold that men are spir- 
itual beings and not mere combinations of 
matter. As a mode of speaking, at least, as 



12 The Future Life 

a figure of speech, we construct a world of 
the dead, where the dead are conceived 
of as existing and as having relations with 
the universe, analagous to those which 
living persons have. 

Whether the habit of thinking arose in 
this way or in some other, it is one of the 
most widespread of human habits. The 
Hebrew has his sheol, the Greek his 
hades, the Anglo-Saxon his hell, and other 
peoples their world of the dead under 
other names. 

And the moment human beings begin 
to talk in this way about the dead they be- 
gin to let their imaginations play in the 
construction of the environment which 
constitutes the world of the dead. They 
diversify it with rivers and lakes and plains 
and mountains. They speak of its 
occupations and its officials and its gods. 
They create for it Acheron and Styx and 
Charon and Pluto. To differentiate its 
inhabitants from those of the realms of 
the living they are perhaps pictured as 



Ethnical Ideas 13 

shadows. It is overhung by the atmos- 
phere of horror and gloom which is sug- 
gested by our natural fear of death and by 
the sorrow that death brings. It must be 
geographically located, and, by our natu- 
ral way of thinking of the high and the 
low, the place for it is not on the surface 
of the earth, nor in the sky, but beneath. 
The world of the dead becomes the un- 
derworld, the infernal region, often specif- 
ically a subterranean region. This mental 
construction, once begun, is handed down 
from generation to generation, and handed 
along from race to race, constantly receiv- 
ing accretions. Sometimes it is made the 
vehicle of serious spiritual meanings. 
Oftener the constructing process becomes 
grotesque, and the regions of the dead are 
peopled with beings as ridiculous as they 
are frightful. To some extent, though 
less than is commonly assumed, men lose 
the consciousness that the scenes thus 
constructed are imaginary, and in a con- 
fused way come to regard them as real. 



14 The Future Life 

There is nothing in this to contradict 
the doctrine that we have actual informa- 
tion, by direct revelation or otherwise, 
concerning human beings who have died ; 
and nothing to contradict the opinion 
that some of the stories concerning the 
nether world are nature myths, and that 
others may be legends with a historical 
basis. Whatever real knowledge we 
have on the subject, and whatever ele- 
ments of myth or legend have entered 
into the treatments of it, we need to rec- 
ognize by itself this perpetual process of 
the human mind in all ages, this never 
ceasing effort in which thought con- 
structs a home for the dead, with condi- 
tions and interests, and limitations like 
and yet unlike those of the living. 

An early Babylonian poet sings how 
Ishtar, goddess of love and of procreation, 
descends for some purpose into the 
world of the dead, passing through seven 
strongly barred gates, leaving her adorn- 
ments successively at one gate after an- 



Ethnical Ideas 15 

other, and coming naked into the pres- 
ence of the infernal goddess Eresh-Kigal, 
who causes her to be afflicted with many 
diseases. While she is detained there, 
men and animals on earth cease to re- 
produce their kind, and are in danger of 
becoming extinct, and the gods have to 
devise a plan for the return of Ishtar. 
This parallels at some points the Greek 
story in which Persephone is carried to 
the lower world by its god Aidoneus, 
while her mother Demeter, the goddess 
of the harvests, wanders in search of her, 
leaving men to suffer by reason of the 
failing crops. Any classical dictionary 
gives us the story of Orpheus visiting the 
underworld in search of his beloved 
Eurydice, charming the infernal deities 
by his music, but failing because he can- 
not resist turning to look at her before 
they reach the upper air. Homer pre- 
sents a detailed story of the visit of Ulysses 
to the realms of the dead, and Virgil does 
the same for iEneas. In some editions 



1 6 The Future Life 

of Josephus we find his alleged discourse 
to the Greeks concerning Hades. In the 
Norse stories Hermod visits the world 
of the dead to procure the release of 
Balder, but fails because one being refuses 
to weep for Balder. 

Narratives of this sort are in all early 
literatures. Commonly, but not always, 
they represent the world of the dead as 
underground. Uniformly it is an abode 
of gloom and pain, and sometimes a place 
of punishment. In some of the presen- 
tations it includes a region of Tartarus, 
where men who are displeasing to the 
gods suffer for their deeds, and a region 
of Elysium where pleasures come to those 
who are pleasing to the gods. And it is 
not merely a primitive way of thinking 
that long since ceased to exist. Poets and 
others renew the theme from generation 
to generation. Dante's Inferno and Mil- 
ton's Paradise Lost and Pollock's Course 
of Time are repetitions of the themes of 
Homer and Virgil. In Fenelon's Tele- 



Ethnical Ideas 17 

machus is a visit to the world of shades 
which exactly parallels those of the classic 
poets. Few of Matthew Arnold's poems 
attract the reader more than his Balder 
Dead. Within a few years past Stephen 
Phillips has reproduced the descent of 
Ulysses into Hades, and Jean Ingelow 
and Miss Sherwood have written charm- 
ing poems on the theme of Demeter and 
Persephone. In our current accounts of 
the happy hunting grounds of the Ameri- 
can Indian, who is able to distinguish be- 
tween the original tradition and the 
embellishment added by the white men 
who have written on the subject?* 

Reality, or Figure of Speech ? 
What was the character of representa- 

* Read some of the literary masterpieces on this 
theme, in a form as near the original as is possible for you, 
for example on Ishtar in George Smith's Chaldaean Account 
of Genesis, pp. 226-236, or in other works on Babylonia ; on 
Balder in Matthew Arnold ; on Persephone in the Classical 
Dictionaries and in Persephone by Miss Margaret Sherwood ; 
on Ulysses in the Odyssey XI and Ulysses by Stephen Phillips ; 
the Mneid VI ; Telemachus XVIII. 

B 



1 8 The Future Life 

tions of this kind, as they existed in early 
times? In a recent book, The Greek 
View of Life, by Mr. G. Lowes Dickin- 
son, it is said : " The mythology which 
we regard merely as a collection of 
fables was to the Greeks actually true ; 
or at least, to nine Greeks out of ten it 
would never occur that it might be false, 
might be, as we say, mere stories." To 
keep this statement from being mislead- 
ing, it needs all the limitations which the 
author gives it in the context. When 
we follow the current fashion and speak 
of early peoples as naive and childlike in 
their beliefs, we should do well to re- 
member that there are children and chil- 
dren. At Christmas three or four little 
children out of twenty appreciate the 
fictitious character of Santa Claus as well 
as their elders, three or four are blindly 
credulous, and the rest are in confusion 
of mind between the two attitudes. We 
should also do well to remember that in 
many matters of observation these early 



Ethnical Ideas 19 

peoples had better trained judgments 
than we. 

Commonly in the ethnical religions the 
condition of the dead was regarded as 
depending on rites of sepulture. Until 
the body was buried or burned with due 
religious ceremonies, it was held that the 
departed shade was wandering and rest- 
less and wretched. In this there was an 
outreach of tender sentiment toward the 
dead, and it was one which the interests 
of the priests did not require them to 
discourage. 

It is impossible accurately to dissect 
the pre-Christian pictures of the world 
of the dead, and decide what parts were 
regarded as reality. Different persons 
looked at them differently. There was 
in them an element of reality of the 
character of natural fact. There was in 
them an element of reality of the char- 
acter of moral and spiritual truth. 
There was sober figure of speech for 
the presentation of these realities. There 



20 The Future Life 

was the confusion that comes when men 
understand literally that which was 
uttered figuratively. There was the de- 
liberate adding of pictorial features, 
often of grotesque features, to the repre- 
sentation as it previously existed. There 
was again the attempt to understand se- 
riously that which had become fanciful. 
On the whole, the mechanical view 
taken by books of reference when they 
tell us that the ancient Babylonians or 
Greeks or Scandinavians or others held 
such and such doctrines concerning a 
future state, is to be but partially de- 
pended upon. Minds differ now and 
differed anciently in their conception of 
such matters as these. 

All the same such matters were prom- 
inent elements in human thinking in the 
generations before Jesus. The Jews, 
scattered everywhere among the nations 
came into contact with them, and their 
own thinking was affected by them. 
Romans and the various Greek-speaking 



Ethnical Ideas 21 

elements of the population brought 
them into Palestine in the time of Jesus. 
They were an element in the mental 
furniture of the persons with whom He 
associated when on earth. 



CHAPTER III 

Before Jesus. — Israelitish Ideas of 
a Future State 

rHERE is no more marked char- 
acteristic of the Old Testament 
than the relative absence from it 
of such phenomena as those treated in 
the preceding chapter. Both its silences 
and its utterances on this subject are 
worthy of careful attention. 

Sheol, the World of the Dead 

It uses abundantly the conception of 
the world of the dead. The word Sheo/, 
the proper word for this conception, oc- 

22 



Israelitish Ideas 23 

curs sixty-five times, and other words are 
often used in the same sense, for ex- 
ample "the pit," "Abaddon.'' It rep- 
resents Sheol as an underworld, using 
such phrases as " beneath,' ' "lowest 
Sheol," "deeper than Sheol," "go down 
into," "bring up from," "though they 
dig into Sheol " (e. g. Isa. xiv. 9 ; Ps. 
lxxxvi. 13 ; Job xi. 8, vii. 9 ; Ps. xxx. 3 ; 
Amos ix. 2). In some instances its 
underworld is distinctly subterranean. 
It is full of darkness and gloom and 
pain ; perhaps in some passages a place 
of punishment. 

Seven times the Old Testament de- 
notes the inhabitants of the underworld 
by the noun rephaim, "giants," perhaps 
conceiving of them as abnormal, fright- 
ful beings, shadowy and unsubstantial, 
possibly as palpable to the eye and the 
ear in some circumstances, but not to 
the touch ; its representations being in 
these respects similar to those in the 
ethnical traditions. 



24 The Future Life 

But here the resemblances end. The 
Old Testament is reticent. It omits de- 
tails. It marks out no route by which 
one can sail or ride or walk, as in the 
case of Ulysses or Hermod or iEneas, 
to the infernal regions. There is no 
Cerberus at the gate, and no Stygian 
ferryman ; no Pluto or Frigga or Eresh- 
kigal, or other god or goddess of Sheol ; 
no Minos and Rhadamanthus, judges of 
the dead ; no details of punishment, no 
wheel of Ixion or stone of Sisyphus or 
thirst of Tantalus ; no Tartarus and 
Elysium. 

When a recent writer says that in 
Proverbs vii. 27 "Sheol is said to have 
distinct divisions/ ' he is stretching the 
natural figure of speech "the chambers 
of death " beyond all recognition. 
When another speaks of " the old belief 
that in Sheol the dead would be known 
by their dress, the king by his diadem, 
the soldier by his sword, the prophet by 
his mantle/ ' citing Ezekiel xxxii. 27 and 



Israelitish Ideas 25 

I Samuel xxviii. 14 in proof, he outrages 
the fine pictorial language of Ezekiel by 
putting it into a mechanical strait-jacket. 
In the passage he refers to in Samuel 
there is no Sheol, and no recognizing the 
prophet by his mantle. The same wri- 
ter says, commenting on Ezekiel xxxii. 
23 and Isaiah xiv. 15, etc., that "the 
spirits of the unburied dead wander rest- 
lessly about, and in Sheol are condemned 
to lie in the corners/ ' The dead 
spoken of in Ezekiel are not unburied, 
but are in their graves, and neither pas- 
sage says anything about spirits or cor- 
ners. All comments of this kind on 
the Old Testament are importations of 
foreign ideas. The absence of such 
details is a marked feature of the primary 
sacred literature of Israel. 

Ordinarily in the Old Testament to 
say that a person goes down to Sheol is 
simply a figurative way of saying that he 
dies (e. g. Gen. xxxvii. 35, xlii. 38, xliv. 
29, 31 ; Job xvii. 13-16). To say that 



26 The Future Life 

he is in Sheol is the same as to say that 
he is one of the dead. To speak of 
rephaim is the same as to speak of dead 
persons (e. g. Prov. ii. 18, ix. 18, xxi. 16). 
And all the other uses of these terms are 
simply expansions of this use. As this 
mode of speaking calls the world of the 
dead the lower world, Sheol is some- 
times used as the equivalent of that 
which is lowest down, physically, intel- 
lectually or morally (Deut xxxii. 22 ; 
Ps. cxxxix. 8 ; Job xi. 8 ; Isa. lvii. 9). 
As death is the great destroyer, Sheol is a 
synonym for destroying forces. It is 
all-devouring, cruel, implacable, unap- 
peasable (e. g. Isa. v. 14 ; Cant. viii. 6 ; 
Prov. i. 12, xxvii. 20, xxx. 16 ; Hab. 
ii 5). 

As death is commonly thought of as 
the cessation of activity, so Sheol is often 
mentioned as a place of rest where there 
is no action or device or feeling or wor- 
ship or praise (e. g. Job xiv. 13 ; Ps. vi. 
5, xxxi. 17, cf. 22, xlix. 14, lxxxviii. 3-6, 



Israelitish Ideas 27 

10-12 ; Ec. ix. 10 ; Isa. xxxviii. 18). It 
is a mistake to infer from such expres- 
sions as these that those who used them 
had no knowledge of immortality, or 
that they " believed that when a man 
died he was removed from the jurisdic- 
tion of Jehovah, and relations between 
them ceased." Death and its sequences 
constitute a matter which has different 
phases, and those who think at all look 
at it sometimes from one aspect and 
sometimes from another. We Chris- 
tians believe in immortality, and believe 
that God's jurisdiction is universal in all 
worlds ; but we have hymns that speak 
of the dead as asleep in the ground, as 
unconscious and helpless. Jesus Him- 
self speaks of the night that cometh 
when no man can work (John ix. 4). 
In the Israelite literature as in our own, 
when we find statements that seem 
to mean that death ends all, we must 
understand them in the light of other 
statements that affirm the contrary. 



28 The Future Life 

There are instances in which con- 
sciousness is verbally attributed to men 
in Sheol, and instances when men are 
said to be raised up from Sheol, when 
the meaning is no more than that 
they suffer sheol-like troubles, or that 
they are in Sheol in the sense of being 
on its verge, and are brought back 
thence. 

Though the Old Testament intro- 
duces us to no gods of the infernal re- 
gions, Sheol is once or twice spoken of 
as a realm capable of taking official ac- 
tion. Certain persons make a covenant 
with Sheol (Isa. xxviii. 15, 18). Sheol is 
represented as having "enlarged herself" 
(Isa. v. 14) to provide accommodations 
for the vast numbers of the slain who are 
coming down thither. Evidently these 
expressions are capable of being under- 
stood as vivid figures of speech, not in- 
tended to give information concerning 
the infernal regions. 



Israelitish Ideas 29 

Details concerning Sheol 
Three passages come nearer than 
others to being statements of details con- 
cerning the world of the dead. In 
Ezekiel xxxii. 17-32, Sheol is mainly a 
vast field of graves where lie the men of 
the different nations, victors and van- 
quished alike, slain by the sword. The 
point of the prophecy is that Pharaoh 
king of Egypt shall join them. The 
description begins by the statement that 
" godlike warriors shall speak to him out 
of the midst of Sheol " (21). Near the 
close is the statement that " Pharaoh 
shall see them, and shall be conforted 
over all his multitude : even Pharaoh 
and all his army, slain by the sword " 
(31). It is only to this limited extent 
that we find here consciousness and ac- 
tivity among the denizens of the world 
of the dead. 

In Job xxvi. 5, 6, God's omniscience is 
said to extend to the underworld, and 
this is instanced along with His hanging 



30 The Future Life 

the earth upon nothing, and with other 
creative works. 

" The rephaim writhe 

from beneath the waters and their inhabitants \ 
Sheol is naked before Him, 

and Abaddon hath no covering." 

It is easy to interpret this as giving the 
same picture of restless, writhing, wan- 
dering shades that we find in the ethni- 
cal literatures, but can we be sure that 
this is the intended meaning ? 

More in full is Isaiah xiv. 9-11, 
spoken concerning the deceased king of 
Babylon. 

" Sheol from beneath is excited for thee, 

to meet thy coming. 
The shades are aroused for thee, 

all that were great on earth ; 
They are made to rise up from their thrones, 

all kings of nations. 

u All of them answer, 

yea, they say unto thee : 
' Art thou also become weak as we ? 
art thou become like unto us ? ' 



Israelitish Ideas 31 

• 

" Thy pomp is brought down to sheol, 
the noise of thy viols. 
Maggots are spread out beneath thee, 
and thy coverlet is worms." 

Here we have something that is su- 
perficially very much like the ethnical 
conceptions of the underworld — Sheol 
inhabited by a thronging multitude of 
shades, who are conscious of being per- 
petually weak and sickened and miserable, 
among them kings and chieftains, an ex- 
citable populace, capable of malignant 
exultation over the distinguished new- 
comer who arrives among them. But the 
picture is a flashlight, and has no successor. 
As the view dissolves it gives place not to 
another scene from the world of the 
dead, but to a purely material terrestrial 
picture, that of the decomposing corpse 
of the king of Babylon, lying on a mat- 
tress of maggots and covered with a 
blanket of worms. There are in the pas- 
sage no further disclosures from Sheol, 
though Sheol is mentioned. The kings 



32 The Future Life 

who have died in the past are represented 
as sleeping not in Sheol, but in stately sep- 
ulchres at their own homes (18). The 
king of Babylon is deprived of sepulture, 
and this is spoken of as a misfortune and 
an ignominy, but not as having any effect 
on his standing in the world of the 
dead (19, 20). In short we have even 
here a burst of pictorial imagery, rather 
than a presentation of views soberly 
held concerning conscious existence af- 
ter death. 

The same is true of the passages which 
connect Sheol with the punishment of 
sin (e. g. Job xxiv. 19, Ps. ix. 17), for 
who can be sure that the penalty in these 
cases is anything else than death itself ? 
What proof can one give that it is some- 
thing inflicted after death ? 

Life from Sheol 

It does not follow, however, that the 
Old Testament, in what it says concern- 
ing Sheol, is silent on the matter of life 



Ismelitish Ideas 33 

after death. There remains a class of 
passages which are in this respect in con- 
trast with those that have been thus far 
considered. These are the passages that 
represent God as supreme or victorious 
over Sheol, over the pit, over destruction, 
over death, as able to rescue men from 
these, and as actually rescuing men. 
These passages are numerous and of great 
variety (e. g. Ps. xlix. 14-15, xvi, 10, 11, 
xvii. 15, lxxiii. 24-26, ciii. 4 ; Job xiv. 14 
and context, xix. 25-27 ; Ezek. xxxvii. 12, 
13 ; Isa. xxvi. 19, xxv. 8 ; Hos. xiii. 14, 
Dan. xii. 2). Some of them are national 
and some individual. As contributions 
to a specific scheme of eschatology they 
are of unlike values. But they agree in 
emphasizing the truth that death cannot 
defeat God. Those that sleep in death 
may awake. The dead may live. They 
that are buried may come up from their 
graves. Release will come, though the 
waiting be long. He that trusts in God 
is not abandoned to Sheol. God redeems 



34 The Future Life 

men from Sheol, ransoms them from its 
power. Death and Sheol are taunted 
with their defeat: "O death, where are 
thy plagues ? O Sheol, where is thy de- 
stroying power ? " It is said that Jehovah 
God " hath swallowed up death forever," 
and " will wipe away tears from off all 
faces." The believer shall " see God," 
personally see Him, behold His face in 
righteousness, "be sated " "in His pres- 
ence" with " fulness of joy." God who 
is "my portion forever " will guide me 
with His counsel, " and afterward receive 
me to glory." 

Besides what it has to say concerning 
the world of the dead the Old Testament 
has other ways of speaking of a future 
state. We must dismiss them for the 
present with a bare mention, though 
some of them will come up for consider- 
ation in the next chapter. A belief in 
angels and spirits is commonly accom- 
panied by a belief in a future state, and 
the Old Testament has much to say con- 



Israelitish Ideas 35 

cerning angels and spirits. It makes 
much of the doctrine that man is in the 
likeness of God, and it teaches that God 
is ever living. It presents us with such 
cases as those of Enoch and Elijah, trans- 
ferred to the other world without death. 
One of its customary phrases for death is 
that a person lies down to sleep with his 
fathers, and it is not too much to say that 
sleep implies at least the possibility of 
awaking. The Old Testament is per- 
meated with the idea that Jehovah is in 
present relations with Abraham and Isaac 
and Jacob and others who have died in 
the past. 

Further, in its doctrine of a divine 
promise that is to be eternally fulfilled, 
a divine kingdom among men that is to 
be eternal, the participation of men of 
every date in these operations that are to 
be eternal, it at least fixes our thoughts 
on activities that are beyond the finite life 
of any man. In its presentations of 
Jehovah coming to judgment, and of the 



36 The Future Life 

day of Jehovah, it at least provides the 
phraseology for a doctrine of future 
judgment. And occasionally, especially 
in the later of its writings, we find 
glimpses of resurrection and future 
punishment or blessedness. 

The Doctrine of the Scribes 

The Jewish scribes, who lived after the 
prophets, came to hold very pronounced 
doctrines concerning the future. Per- 
haps it will help us to clearness of 
thought here if we understand that the 
most explicit and trustworthy informa- 
tion we have in this matter comes from 
the New Testament, though of course 
fuller details are obtainable elsewhere. 
Opposite opinions were hotly disputed 
as between the Pharisees and the Sad- 
ducees. The Pharisees quoted all parts 
of the Old Testament in proof of the 
doctrine of the resurrection, often basing 
their arguments on the tenses of verbs 
or on subtilties of interpretation. They 



Israelitish Ideas 37 

developed special uses of the Hebrew 
word olam, eternity, and its Greek 
equivalent "aeon." From the horrible 
Hinnom ravine, south of Jerusalem, they 
framed the word gehenna to denote the 
future world of punishment. They 
framed other terminology to express the 
views concerning the future that seemed 
to them important. They drew from 
ethnical sources as well as from the Old 
Testament, and established a definite 
scheme of eschatological doctrine. 

Jesus made His advent in the midst of 
social conditions that were saturated with 
ideas of this type. 



CHAPTER IV 

Jesus Interpreting the Older 
Teachings 

/N the Sermon on the Mount Jesus 
assumes that His hearers have a 
familiarity with the contents of the 
Old Testament, and that they have 
gained it through the teachings of the 
scribes. In citing the Old Testament 
He does not say "ye have read/' but 
uniformly "ye have heard that it was 
said." He aims His address at persons 
whose mental equipment has come from 
the Scriptures as expounded by the 
scribes, and into the scribal interpreta- 
38 



Jesus Interpreting 39 

tions had filtered many ideas drawn from 
the nations among whom the Jews had 
been for many generations dispersed. 
When He spoke of a future life Jesus 
did not address minds that were blank 
on the subject, but minds that were al- 
ready furnished with theories. His 
work was largely the interpreting and 
purging and supplementing of knowl- 
edge that men already possessed. 

Jesus Opposing the Sadducees 
As in the case of most other theologi- 
cal doctrines, Jesus was in accord with 
the Pharisees in His interpretation of 
the Old Testament as teaching that 
there is life after death. In His modes 
of interpretation, however, He differed 
with them. When the Sadducees at- 
tempted to pose Him with the instance 
of the seven brothers who successively 
married one woman, His argument took 
this form : " That the dead are raised 
even Moses shewed in the place con- 



40 The Future Life 

cerning the Bush when he calleth the 
Lord the God of Abraham, and the God 
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now 
He is not the God of the dead, but of 
the living ; for to Him all are living " 
(Luke xx. 37, 38, cf. 27-39 and Matt. 
xxii. 23-33 and Mark xii. 18-27). 

A similar exegesis would apply to a 
vast number of other passages in the Old 
Testament. If Jesus is exegetically cor- 
rect, then the Old Testament is full of 
the doctrines of immortality and resur- 
rection. Strange to say, however, this 
conclusion is denied even by many who 
profess to accept implicitly the authority 
of Jesus. At least from the years 
when Bishop Warburton published his 
c< Divine Legation of Moses " (a. D. 
1738-41), many have been accustomed 
to assert that Moses and the other men 
of the Old Testament, up to a late pe- 
riod, knew nothing of the doctrine of 
immortality. In the circumstances we 
are not permitted to take this matter for 



Jesus Interpreting 41 

granted, but are compelled to argue it, 
though the argument must be brief. 

Certainly the Pentateuch contains no 
such elaborate statements concerning a 
future state as are found in the New 
Testament, or in the Egyptian Book of 
the Dead. This may be accounted for 
by supposing that the men of that gen- 
eration knew nothing of a future state. 
Can it equally well be accounted for by 
supposing that they were familiar with 
the doctrine, but that there was no oc- 
casion for giving it a formal mention in 
the writings that have been handed 
down to us ? And if this latter hypoth- 
esis is admissible, which of the two is to 
be preferred ? 

The books of Moses do not profess to 
teach a complete theology, nor to give a 
system of ethics. This being the case, 
their silence on even a great religious 
doctrine does not by itself prove that 
generation to have been either ignorant 
of it or uninfluenced by it. And it is 



42 The Future Life 

difficult to think it possible that people 
so intelligent as Abraham and his tribe 
lived for a long time within the bound- 
aries of the Babylonian civilization, and 
yet remained ignorant of the ideas of a 
future state that prevailed there. It is 
equally difficult to think that Israel in 
Egypt failed of being familiar with the 
doctrines that were taught there. And 
at any time from Moses to the Macca- 
bees, how could men so intelligent as 
the writers of the Scriptures be utterly 
ignorant of the ideas of immortality that 
prevailed among the peoples with whom 
Israel came into contact ? 

But some one rejoins that so wise a 
man as Moses, if he had known of the 
doctrine of immortality, so vital in itself, 
so potent, so well adapted to the purposes 
of civil and religious legislation, would 
not have failed to make prominent use 
of it ; and that his silence therefore 
proves that he did not know. 

This reasoning might be valid in a state 



Jesus Interpreting 43 

of things in which the doctrine of im- 
mortality was unknown or imperfectly 
known, so that it would need to be 
newly stated and enforced ; it does not 
apply in conditions where the doctrine is 
well known. If the belief in immortality 
was generally accepted by the genera- 
tions to which the Mosaic legislation was 
given, if everybody was familiar with it 
as all Christians are in our day, then there 
may have been no occasion for restating 
it. Just to take it for granted may have 
been the wiser course. 

It is a mistake to assume that because 
immortality was a matter of speculation, 
rather than of earnest opinion, among 
the later Greeks and Romans, therefore 
the same must previously have been 
always and everywhere the case. What 
was vague conjecture in the time of 
Seneca may have been a living belief a 
thousand years earlier. Opinions that 
were once bright and vivid fade out in 
the lapse of centuries, and revive after 



44 The Future Life 

other centuries. That the human belief 
in immortality has passed through these 
stages is now a matter of information, 
and no longer of conjecture. 

If the fathers of Israel found such a 
belief current, they had no need to 
reiterate formally the doctrine of a 
future state. They might take it for 
granted, just as they take the being of 
God for granted. The need of more 
elaborate revelation might arise at a later 
period, when the original faith had be- 
come dull ; but the temper of mind of 
the early generations was such that they 
needed to have their attention drawn to 
God's dealings with men in the present 
world rather than in the world to come. 

This hypothesis, then, is as tenable as 
the other. It is as fair to suppose that 
the Mosaic books omit extended in- 
struction concerning the future world 
because none was needed as to suppose 
that such instruction was then beyond 
human reach. And this latter hypoth- 



Jesus Interpreting 45 

esis is contradicted by phenomena that 
appear throughout the Old Testament. 

" Enoch walked with God, and he 
was not, for God took him/' Can this 
be prevented from meaning that for 
Enoch there was another life beyond the 
present? And if the writer understood 
that Enoch, by the unusual door of 
translation, departed out of this life into 
another, whither did he suppose those 
go who depart this life by the usual door 
of death ? Does he not imply another 
life for them also ? Having clearly in 
mind the fact of a future state for one or 
more human beings, can he have failed 
to consider whether there might be such 
a state for other human beings ? And if 
he raised this question, how is he likely 
to have disposed of it ? 

When we are told that man was made 
il in the image of God," can we discon- 
nect this thought from that of immortal- 
ity? The Sadducees were not alone in 
joining a disbelief in angels and spirits 



46 The Future Life 

with their disbelief in a resurrection. It 
is contrary to all analogies of human 
thinking to suppose that these writers, 
who constantly present to us angels and 
spirits, good and evil, were without the 
conception of human beings surviving 
the death of the body. They and their 
contemporaries practised religious bur- 
ial, the mode of sepulture that naturally 
connects itself with the expectation of 
life after death. 

Very prominent both in the Pen- 
tateuch and the other Old Testament 
books is the appeal to the future, even 
when it is not in terms an appeal to the 
future life. The covenant after the 
flood was with Noah and his descend- 
ants to "perpetual generations." The 
promises to the patriarchs are to them 
and their posterity. The second com- 
mandment mentions the third and fourth 
generations of those that hate God, 
and thousands of those that love Him. 
The promises and threats made to 



Jesus Interpreting 47 

Israel are largely for remote generations. 
And in all these appeals to the future 
not one word is said about fame, not one 
word about the gratitude which poster- 
ity will feel to the memory of one who 
has done them a benefit, not one word 
about the undying glory which he 
might win in their estimation. In this 
the old Scriptures are peculiar. Their 
view of the future differs from the com- 
mon worldly view. They urge motives 
drawn from the future, not as to one 
thirsting for fame, or for remembrance 
after one is dead, but as if one might be 
expected to take an interest in things 
that will occur after his death, just as he 
does in things that surround him while 
living. It is something else than mere 
accident of idiom that Jehovah's cove- 
nant is with Abraham and Isaac and 
Jacob, not with the memory of them, 
not with their heirs and assigns, not with 
their posthumous reputation, but always 
with the men themselves. It is assumed 



48 The Future Life 

that they are somehow still alive, to have 
faith kept with them. 

By parity of reasoning we might find 
similar meanings in many other passages, 
in those, for example, that concern 
David and other worthies. The old 
Scriptures from beginning to end, in- 
stead of ignoring the idea of a future 
state, take that idea for granted as too 
well known to need explanation. They 
are saturated with it rather than destitute 
of it. 

Jesus Use of Terms that had become 
Current 

The Old Testament word sheol and its 
synonyms (translated "pit/* "destruc- 
tion," etc.) are represented in the New 
Testament by the Greek word hades and 
its synonyms. We have the record of 
the use by Jesus of the word Hades on 
three occasions. The gates of Hades 
shall not prevail against the church 
(Matt. xvi. 18). Capernaum shall be 



Jesus Interpreting 49 

thrust down to Hades (Matt. xi. 23 ; 
Luke x. 15). In these cases the word 
stands for forces of disintegration, such 
as we associate with death. Capernaum 
shall perish, and the church shall not. 
But in the narrative of the rich man and 
Lazarus Hades is properly the world of 
the dead. Jesus gives details beyond 
any found in the Old Testament. The 
rich man is in Hades, "in torments." 
There, too, is Lazarus, within reach of 
communication, but "afar off " beyond 
the impassable gulf, in Abraham's 
bosom, whither the angels have carried 
him (Luke xvi. 22-31). Apparently 
Jesus is here using modes of representa- 
tion which the scribes had made famil- 
iar. Unmistakably His language is fig- 
urative, but just as unmistakably He 
regards it as standing for reality. 

The Old Testament never speaks of 
heaven as a place of blessedness for men 
who have departed this life, though we 
might perhaps infer a heaven for men 



50 The Future Life 

from what it says of heaven as the abode 
of God. But the doctrine of a heaven 
of reward is conspicuous, as we shall see 
in the following chapters, in the teach- 
ing of Jesus and His early disciples. 
Heaven is not the only term employed 
for this purpose. Jesus also speaks of a 
person's being in Abraham's bosom, of 
sitting with Abraham and Isaac and 
Jacob, of being at the feast, and so 
forth. Presumably these were terms 
which He found in current use. 

The same is true of the terms in which 
He expresses the future of the lost. 
Such phrases as "the outer darkness," 
"the weeping and gnashing of teeth/' 
are used with the definite article, as being 
familiar and current (e. g. Matt. viii. 12, 
xiii. 42, 50, xxii. 13, xxiv. 51, xxv. 30 ; 
Luke xiii. 28). " Unquenchable fire " 
and "the furnace of fire " (Matt. iii. 12 ; 
Luke iii. 17 ; Mark ix. 43 and Matt. xiii. 
42, 50) are Old Testament phrases, 
though there applied to punishment in 



Jesus Interpreting 51 

the present world. The gehenna of fire, 
the worm that dies not and the fire that 
is not quenched, the fire and brimstone 
and smoke of the pit, are reminiscent of 
the dreadful valley of Hinnom and of 
the horrible region north of the Dead 
Sea where Sodom perished, and of the 
use which the scribes made of these Old 
Testament materials. 

The terms in which Jesus speaks of 
the kingdom, the Messiah, the promise, 
salvation, the day of Jehovah, the judg- 
ment, and especially His treatment of the 
ideas of eternity and of the present age 
and the age to come will be treated 
in some of the following chapters. For 
the present, note the importance of 
the fact that Jesus had to deal not with 
the Old Testament alone, but with the 
Old Testament as taught by the scribes. 
He and they alike regarded many of 
these phrases as figures of speech, but as 
figures that stand for something that is 
most solemnly real. And the fact that 



52 The Future Life 

He chose to teach in terms that others 
had made ready does not render the 
teaching any the less His. It sometimes 
importantly modifies our interpretation 
of His teaching ; but He is responsible 
for that which He accepted and passed 
along, as well as for that which He 
originated. 

In Contrast with His Predecessors 

While Jesus thus freely uses the ideas 
and phrases that had then become tradi- 
tional, His teaching as to a future life 
is nevertheless peculiarly His own. For 
example, He differs from many teachers 
ancient and modern in that He treats of 
the future life as a matter of revelation 
from God. Constantly He appeals either 
directly or indirectly to the Scriptures, 
or else testifies from what he affirms to 
be personal knowledge. As the result 
of this His statements are never abstruse, 
and never lacking in positiveness of con- 
viction. Contrast the personality which 



Jesus Interpreting 53 

He attributes to men in Hades with the 
presentations made by the classic poets. 
His Dives and Lazarus are not half con- 
scious, irresponsible shades, suffering the 
common misfortune of being dead, but 
are themselves, having each his own con- 
sciousness, alert and responsible. In 
preparation for writing this little book 
I have read several of the recently pub- 
lished treatises by eminent men on im- 
mortality. Some of them, most ad- 
mirable as pieces of workmanship, are 
yet elusive, dependant on fine-drawn 
theories, not intelligible to untechnical 
minds, dominated by a note of un- 
certainty. Such treatments, however 
meritorious, are sharply unlike the clear, 
intelligible, undoubting statements of 
Jesus. 

Again, Jesus differs from many others 
in His division of the emphasis between 
the present and the future. Unlike the 
ancient Egyptian priests and some mod- 
ern religious teachers, He does not re- 



54 The Future Life 

move the emphasis from present charac- 
ter and conduct in order to place it upon 
future destiny. Unlike many at the 
present time, He does not ignore the fu- 
ture for the sake of insisting upon the 
present. On the contrary, He recognizes 
the continuity of the present and the 
future, and so emphasizes each as to in- 
crease the emphasis upon the other. 

Further, Jesus removes the emphasis 
from death, and places it on life. This 
is true, notwithstanding the fact that His 
utterances concerning punishment after 
death are numerous, and are perhaps 
more severe and more really dreadful 
than can be found elsewhere in litera- 
ture. Others had depicted an under- 
world of gloom and pain and weakness, 
of bloodless shades that moan and 
shriek and swirl. Even if they located 
an Elysium somewhere, they mainly 
thought of the world of the dead as dis- 
mal alike for the good and the evil. 
Jesus everywhere places life in the fore- 



Jesus Interpreting 55 

ground, life that is triumphant over 
death, life that is real and rich and abun- 
dant. 

Finally, a differentiating fact even 
more marked than the others is His 
persistently connecting the future life of 
men with His own personality. " Be- 
cause I live ye shall live also." He is to 
be the Judge of the righteous and the 
wicked. This is one of the marks of 
the extraordinary character of the teach- 
ings of Jesus. We have in Him no 
mere philosopher, speculatively inquiring 
whether death ends all, but a person 
who represents Himself as in partnership 
with each one of us in the matter of our 
personal life after death. 



CHAPTER V 

The Kingdom and the Future Life 

rHE Old Testament is the lit- 
erature of the promise made by 
God through Abraham to man- 
kind, and of Israel as the people of the 
promise. From the time of David the 
promise is prominently of a kingdom of 
God on earth. Narrowly the kingdom 
is Israel, but the promise is that it shall 
become world-wide, and shall be eternal. 
It is described in political phraseology, 
but also with spiritual aspects. Its king 
is to be eternally of the seed of David, 
and is described as Jehovah's "anointed," 
that is, His Messiah, His Christ. 

56 



The Heavenly Kingdom 57 

The New Testament is the literature of 
the fulfilment of this promise in the 
person of Jesus. In affirming the prom- 
ise it employs many of the ancient terms 
and phrases, but especially emphasizes 
the kingdom and its anointed king, the 
Christ. The phrase "the kingdom of 
God " occurs often and in many of the 
books. " Kingdom of heaven" is the 
preferred form in Matthew. Other ex- 
pressions appear occasionally. 

In childhood many of us got the im- 
pression that "kingdom of heaven" is 
little else than a synonym for heaven, the 
world of reward. We have all learned, 
however, that the kingdom as presented 
by Jesus is emphatically concerned with 
the things of the present world, and 
some make the mistake of excluding 
the world to come from their concep- 
tion of it. 

The teaching of Jesus concerning the 
kingdom has been admirably set forth 
by Dr. Vos in one of the volumes of the 



58 The Future Life 

present series, and the discussion of it is 
no part of the purpose now in hand. 
We have to do here only with the fact 
that the kingdom, in addition to its 
provinces in the present world, includes 
the realm of the world to come. 

Its terrestrial provinces are important. 
Not to discuss the relations of the king- 
dom to the church, I think that some of 
the existing differences of opinion might 
be made matters of definition. Person- 
ally I should prefer to identify the king- 
dom with the church throughout, and 
then to distinguish between the organic 
church and the organized church, the 
organic church being the divine aggre- 
gate of persons and forces that is repre- 
sented in the church as humanly or- 
ganized. 

We are very familiar with the old 
distinction of the church militant and 
the church triumphant. 

u Part of the host have crossed the flood, 
And part are crossing now." 



The Heavenly Kingdom 59 

To no idea has the consciousness of 
Christians been more hospitable than to 
that of the kingdom of God as lying on 
both sides of the river of Death. Is this 
consonant with the mind of Christ ? 

The Unending Kingdom promised to David 
and Israel 
Jesus assumes that the kingdom is the 
one promised of old, that there is a sense 
in which persons of Israelitish blood 
have especial relations to it. He speaks 
of certain conditions in which " the sons 
of the kingdom " shall be deprived of its 
privileges (Matt. viii. 12 ; Luke xiii. 28). 
He says that on account of their ob- 
duracy "the kingdom of God shall be 
taken away from them," and given to 
others (Matt. xxi. 43). When He in- 
sists (John iii) that Nicodemus and 
other Jews must be born anew in order 
to enter the kingdom, He recognizes 
the existence of their claim that they are 
already in the kingdom through their 



60 The Future Life 

Jewish birth. The teachings of Jesus 
are in accord with the message of the 
angel who assigns to Him " the throne 
of His father David," and with the cry 
of the multitudes that rejoiced in the 
coming kingdom " of our father David ' ' 
(Luke i. 32 ; Mark xi. 10). 

Doubtless Jesus agreed with His early 
disciples in recognizing the eternal dura- 
tion attributed in the Old Testament to 
the kingdom (e. g. Matt. vi. 13, A. V.; 
Luke L 33 ; II Pet. i. 11). And, how- 
ever He and they may have substituted 
the idea of a kingdom of influence, or a 
kingdom of spiritual forces, for that of a 
political kingdom, they certainly located 
the kingdom here on the earth, just as 
had been the case with the ancient king- 
dom of David and Solomon. Accord- 
ing to their view it is to endure in the 
earth as long as anything shall endure. 

We are not necessarily compelled to 
see anything more than this in what 
Jesus said when He told Pilate that His 



The Heavenly Kingdom 61 

kingdom is not of this world (John xviii. 
36). Pilate understood Him in the light 
of the scene, then recent, when the 
multitude had escorted Jesus into Jeru- 
salem, with acclamations to Him as " the 
king that cometh in the name of the 
Lord/' The governor knew that this 
kingdom belonged to a world of spir- 
itual and altruistic ideas, very different 
from the common political world in 
which insurrections against Rome were 
fomented. Whether he or Jesus at the 
moment thought of this other world as 
related to the world of future blessed- 
ness is another question. 

The Kingdom and Men who live after 
Death 

There are other passages, however, in 
which Jesus unmistakably connects the 
kingdom with matters that follow death. 
We have the picture of certain ones 
who have been " cast forth into the 
outer darkness " where is " the weeping 



62 The Future Life 

and gnashing of teeth," who " shall see 
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the 
prophets in the kingdom of God," along 
with many that " shall come from the 
east and the west" (Matt. viii. 11, 12; 
Luke xiii. 28, 29). The patriarchs and 
prophets are here presented as partici- 
pating in the life of the kingdom. It is 
life after death for them, whatever it 
may be for the others. 

The phrase " enter into the kingdom 
of God" is used as equivalent to "enter 
into life " (Mark ix. 47, 43, 45), and the 
alternative is being cast into gehenna and 
the unquenchable fire. 

Similar language is used in the pas- 
sages that speak of the "end of the 
world," "the consummation of the age." 
The question what this expression 
means we must defer to our eleventh 
chapter. For the present we note that 
the kingdom is an element in these 
eschatological representations. In the 
parable, " the kingdom of heaven is lik- 



The Heavenly Kingdom 63 

ened unto a man that sowed good seed 
in his field," whose enemy sowed tares 
there. We are told that the good seed 
"are the sons of the kingdom.'* At the 
"harvest/' "at the end of the world/' 
the angels " shall gather out of His 
kingdom . . . them that do iniq- 
uity/' and the righteous shall shine "as 
the sun in the kingdom of their Father " 
(Matt. xiii. 24-43). In the parable in 
which "the kingdom of heaven is like 
unto a net," the sorting of the fishes is an 
emblem of what shall occur " in the end 
of the world" (Matt. xiii. 47-50). 
When the Son of man separates the 
sheep from the goats He will say to 
those on His right hand : " Inherit the 
kingdom prepared for you from the 
foundation of the world " (Matt. xxv. 34). 
These expressions are paralleled by 
others. Jesus, soon to die, looks for- 
ward to drinking the new fruit of the 
vine with His disciples <c in the kingdom 
of God " (Mark xiv. 25, Matt. xxvi. 29). 



64 The Future Life 

The dying thief hopes that Jesus will 
remember him "when thou comest in 
thy kingdom " (Luke xxiii. 42). In the 
Lord's prayer, rightly punctuated, we 
recognize our Father's kingdom in 
heaven as the antitype of His kingdom 
on earth. The binding and loosing on 
earth is connected with that in heaven 
(Matt. xvi. 16-19, xviii. 18). 

Other expressions are to be understood 
in the light of these. Most of the pas- 
sages that speak of the kingly or the ju- 
dicial authority of Christ, or of the re- 
wards of heaven or the pains of exclusion 
therefrom, may doubtless be fairly inter- 
preted as implying that the kingdom ex- 
tends to the future world. Paul does not 
go beyond the warrant of the teaching 
of Jesus when he looks to the Lord to 
save him " unto His heavenly kingdom" 
(II Tim. iv. 18), or when in speaking 
of the resurrection life he says "that 
flesh and blood cannot inherit the king- 
dom of God" (I Cor. xv. 50). 



The Heavenly Kingdom 65 

Antecedent to investigation it was sup- 
posable that the term "kingdom of 
heaven " might be a mere variant for 
"kingdom of God," and that both alike 
might denote exclusively a historical 
movement among men on earth. But 
our study of the matter has shown us 
that the meaning is not thus limited, and 
that the processes of the kingdom extend 
through both the earthly and the future 
world. According to the teaching of 
Jesus the kingdom is eternal not only in 
the sense that it will without limit main- 
tain a succession on the earth, but also in 
the enduring life of the persons who 
people the world of blessedness. 



CHAPTER VI 

Salvation and the Future Life 

£>ALVATION is even more prom- 
i) inent in the teachings of Jesus 
than our English Bibles would in- 
dicate. " One who saves " is the mean- 
ing of the name Jesus. " Thy faith hath 
saved thee " is repeatedly His language 
to those whom He heals physically. In 
the Old Testament the word is com- 
monly used of peoples, but in the New 
of persons. The saving of individuals one 
by one is the generic process in which 
the great salvation, the work of the king- 
dom, is wrought out. 
66 



Salvation 67 

The Soul that is to he Saved 
It is a correct instinct which leads re- 
ligious people to speak of the salvation 
of the "soul," though this expression 
may be misunderstood, and so may be 
misleading. What is the soul ? 

An unsophisticated person seems to 
himself to perceive that a human being 
is a material body united with a spiritual 
part that remembers and reasons and loves 
and rejoices and purposes. We often 
use the word " soul " as the equivalent of 
the " spirit," to denote the non-material 
part of a human person. We are also 
familiar with the different ways of speak- 
ing in which we represent man as made 
up of body and soul and spirit. Without 
criticizing these uses of the term, give 
attention to a third use. Antecedent to 
metaphysical thinking, men feel the need 
of a general term for designating individ- 
uals, each a spirit in combination with 
its body. In our present English we 
might manufacture a noun for this pur- 



68 The Future Life 

pose, calling any particular spirit-and- 
body a " self." Myself is my spirit-and- 
body as differentiated from every other 
self. Yourself is not your spirit nor your 
body, but your personality in which the 
two coexist. 

Properly speaking the English word 
soul denotes the self. When we say that 
the ship went down and fifty souls per- 
ished in her, we do not mean that the 
spirits of those fifty perished ; we mean 
that the fifty ceased to be living human 
persons, ceased to be the unions of spirit 
and body which they had been. Such 
a use indicates the primary and proper 
conception expressed by the word " soul " 
and its equivalents in other languages. 
The other meanings are secondary, ex- 
pressive of our conviction that the essen- 
tial self is the spiritual part of us rather 
than the physical part. The spirit is 
the soul only as the gold of the half- 
eagle is the coin. Properly the soul is 
an entity of a different kind from the 



Salvation 69 

spirit, as in the case of the coin and the 
gold. 

Jesus asks : " What doth it profit a man 
to gain the whole world and forfeit his 
soul?" (Mark viii. 36, Matt. xvi. 26), the 
word for soul occurring several times in 
the context. The revised versions open 
the way to an entirely wrong understand- 
ing by rendering "his life " instead of 
"his soul/ ' The true meaning is indi- 
cated by the form in which the same ut- 
terance of our Lord appears in Luke (ix. 
25), where the reflexive pronoun is used 
instead of the noun : "if he gain the 
whole world and lose or forfeit himself." 
Carry this meaning through the context, 
and you perceive what Jesus here teaches. 
" What should a man give in exchange 
for himself?" "Whosoever is princi- 
pally concerned to save himself shall 
lose himself ; and whosoever shall submit 
himself to loss for my sake and the 
Gospel's shall save himself." As here 
presented, the salvation of one's soul 



70 The Future Life 

depends upon the surrendering of that 
soul to whatever loss may be demanded 
for the sake of Christ and the Gospel. In 
other words, it depends, as Jesus has just 
said in different words, on denying one's 
"self " and taking up the cross and fol- 
lowing Him. 

Doubtless men will persist in the mode 
of thinking in which we conceive of the 
soul as something residing in the body, 
and passing from it at death, because that 
is a mode of thinking which has its uses. 
We shall not be misled by it if we keep 
steadily in mind the limiting conception 
that our souls are nothing else than our- 
selves. In particular this should be our 
conception when we are thinking of sal- 
vation. It is ourselves that are to be, 
saved or lost, and not some fractional part 
of us. 

Save, Saved, Saviour, Salvation 

The words of this stem occur nearly 
two hundred times in the Greek of the 



Salvation 71 

New Testament, more than a score of 
times in the recorded sayings of Jesus. 
They are applied to the saving of men 
from bodily diseases or other temporal 
troubles, but their principal use is to de- 
note the rescue from sin and its con- 
sequences. Christ's mission is the 
" bringing salvation to all men," the sav- 
ing of the world (Tit. ii. 11 ; John iii. 17), 
and the salvation of individuals is one of 
the commonplaces of the primary Chris- 
tian teaching. The antithetical word, 
very often used, is translated "lost." A 
thing is lost when it has passed out of the 
reach or knowledge of the loser. Such 
a lost thing perishes, goes to ruin for lack 
of care, or is in danger of doing so. It 
is in this derivative sense that being lost 
is properly antithetical to being saved. 

Being saved, in the phraseology of 
Jesus, does not differ greatly from being 
in the kingdom. As Jesus teaches that 
men are outside the kingdom until they 
enter it by the new birth (John iii), so 



72 The Future Life 

He counts men among the lost until 
they receive salvation. They are in 
darkness and need to be brought into 
the light (John iii. 19). They are in 
their sins and need to be saved from 
them (Matt. i. 21 ; Luke i. 77). He is 
a Saviour for " remission of sins " (Acts 
v. 31). It is " that which was lost " that 
"the Son of man came to seek and to 
save " (Luke xix. 10). 

The act of passing from the unsaved 
to the saved condition is repentance, the 
same as the act of passing from the out- 
side into the kingdom (Acts v. 31 ; II 
Cor. vii. 10 ; Matt. iv. 17 ; Luke xiii. 3, 
5). Not repentance merely in the sense 
of sorrow for sin, but in the sense of 
change of mind — a transformed mental 
attitude resulting in transformation of 
character and conduct. 

Jesus and His early disciples teach 
unmistakably though not very insistently, 
so far as the use of these words are 
concerned, that salvation is not for the 



Eternal Life 73 

present world only, but also for the 
future life. Echoing Old Testament 
phraseology, they speak of salvation itself 
as eternal (Heb. v. 9 ; II Tim. ii. 10 ; 
cf. Isa. xlv. 17, li. 6, 8). So far forth as 
salvation is synonymous with the king- 
dom, the eternity of the kingdom at- 
taches to it. And expressions of this 
kind are interpreted by those which 
connect salvation with the second com- 
ing of Christ, and with the contrast be- 
tween that and the present world (Heb. 
ix. 28 ; Tit. ii. 11-13). In virtue of our 
salvation we "live together with Him " 
"whether we wake or sleep." Jesus 
Himself emphasizes the doctrine that 
our saving or losing of ourselves is in 
close relations with the coming of the 
Son of man (Matt. xvi. 25-27; Mark 
viii. 35-38 ; Luke ix. 24-27). 

Eternal Life 

There is another phrase which Jesus 
uses in connection with these matters, in 



74 The Future Life 

which the future life is more strongly 
emphasized — the phrase "eternal life/' 
We will consider later the question 
whether the word " eternal " in this use 
strictly denotes time without end, and in 
order not to anticipate, we will for the 
present use instead of "eternal" the 
transferred Greek word " aeonial." 

The English word "life" is used to 
translate three frequent New Testament 
words. One of these is the word for 
soul, already mentioned in this chapter, 
the word on which are built such Eng- 
lish words as psychology, psychical. A 
second, the basis for such words as bi- 
ography, biology, denotes life as a series 
of processes or experiences, as in the 
prayer " that we may lead a tranquil and 
quiet life " (I Tim. ii. 2). Neither of 
these two words is used in the phrase 
"aeonial life." In that phrase the third 
word is used, the basis of such English 
words as zoology, protozoa, the word 
that sets forth life in antithesis to death 



Eternal Life 75 

or to inanimate existence. It is perhaps 
impossible to conceive of one's being 
alive eternally or throughout an age 
without also conceiving of him as pass- 
ing through a succession of experiences 
that is eternal or age-lasting; but the 
gonial life is the being alive, not the 
succession of experiences. 

The phrase " aeonial life " occurs more 
than forty times in the New Testament, 
more than half the occurrences being in 
the words of Jesus, or of persons con- 
versing with Him. Its usual antitheses 
are " judgment ," " wrath of God," 
apoleia (a word strictly antithetical to 
" salvation," and commonly translated by 
"destruction" or "perdition"), or other 
expressions of the divine disapproval or 
punishment. Its variants are such 
phrases as "aeonial comfort," "aeonial 
glory," "aeonial redemption " (II Thess. 
ii. 16; II Tim. ii. 10; I Pet. v. 10; 
Heb. ix. 12). As defined by its use the 
aeonial life is not merely a being alive, 



76 The Future Life 

but such a being alive as signally implies 
the divine favor, such a being alive as 
includes whatever is most desirable and 
delightful. 

As in the case of the kingdom and of 
salvation, the teaching of Jesus is to the 
effect that man has not the gonial life 
until he receives it, though all may re- 
ceive it who will. The fact that one is 
a murderer proves that he has not 
"asonial life abiding in him " (I John iii. 
15), but this is not an intimation as to 
the possession of it by others. Con- 
cerning him " that obeyeth not the 
Son ' ' it is not said that asonial life shall 
be taken away from him, but that he 
''shall not see life"; not that "the 
wrath of God" shall come upon him, 
but that it "abideth on him" (John iii. 
36). 

The teaching is that men in the pres- 
ent world receive this life. "He that 
believeth on the Son hath asonial life" 
(John iii. 36). Not shall have it, but 



Eternal Life 77 

hath it. " Hath aeonial life, and cometh 
not into judgment, but hath passed out 
of death into life " (John v. 24). The 
water that Jesus gives one becomes "in 
him a well of water springing up unto 
aeonial life" (John iv. 14). By exhibit- 
ing "all His long-suffering" in the case 
of Paul, Christ made him " an ensample 
of them which should hereafter believe 
on Him unto aeonial life " (I Tim. i. 16). 
The same is taught in many passages, 
and explicitly. 

The teaching is, further, that the 
aeonial life, begun in the present, con- 
tinues after death. Paul says that we 
shall reap what we sow ; "he that 
soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit 
reap aeonial life " (Gal. vi. 8). Jesus 
says that the believer shall " not be lost, 
but have aeonial life," that he " hath 
aeonial life, and I will raise him up at 
the last day"; and He urges our 
working "for the meat which abideth 
unto aeonial life " (John iii. 16, vi. 54, 



78 The Future Life 

27). The Father's "commandment is 
life aeonial," and is " the word " that 
shall judge us "in the last day'' (John 
xii. 50, 48). 

But though the teaching is that the 
aeonial life belongs to both worlds, it 
places emphasis on the future as distin- 
guished from the present. The aeonial 
life is something to be inherited (Matt. 
xix. 29 ; Mark x. 17 ; Luke x. 25, xviii. 
18), and inheriting implies a forward look 
into the future. We are " heirs, accord- 
ing to hope, of aeonial lif e " (Tit. iii. 7). It 
is a life which we are to " enter into," 
this being sometimes contrasted with 
"the aeonial fire" (Matt. xix. 17, xviii. 8, 9 ; 
Mark ix. 43). In places the aeonial life 
is connected with " the aeon to come" as 
distinguished from "now in this time" 
(Mark x. 30; Luke xviii. 30). We are 
told that " he that hateth his soul in the 
present order of things {kosmos) shall pre- 
serve it unto aeonial life," and that those 
who, emancipated from sin, are God's 



Eternal Life 79 

servants, have their " fruit unto sanctifica- 
tion, and the end aeonial life " (John xii. 
25 ; Rom. vi. 22). 

Future Abodes of Reward and Punishment 

The idea of aeonial life is further illus- 
trated in that which Jesus and His first 
disciples say concerning future reward and 
punishment. Over against the aeonial life 
is aeonial fire, aeonial punishment, aeonial 
sin, aeonial destruction (e. g. Matt, xviii. 
8, xxv. 41, 46 ; Mark iii. 29 ; II Thess. 
i. 9; Jude 7), and the aeonial fire is de- 
fined as unquenchable, and as " the ge- 
henna of fire." There is an aeonial judg- 
ment (Heb. vi. 2). And on the other 
hand, the man who is seeking aeonial life 
is promised " treasure in heaven," where 
we are all counselled to lay up our 
treasures (Mark x. 21 ; Luke xviii. 22, 
xii. 33; Matt. vi. 20). There are 
"aeonial tabernacles," and a house "aeo- 
nial, in the heavens" (Luke xvi. 9; 



80 The Future Life 

II Cor. v. 1) to which we aspire when 
this earthly " tabernacle " is dissolved. 

With the connection thus established 
between the teachings concerning heaven 
on the one hand and those concerning 
the kingdom, salvation, aeonial life, on 
the other, the way is open for adducing 
here all the passages that speak of heaven 
as the abode of blessedness ; but a few 
must suffice. We are to be saved " unto 
His heavenly kingdom " (II Tim. iv. 18). 
Disciples have their reward in heaven 
(Matt. v. 12; Luke vi. 23). Their 
names are written in heaven, and there 
is a hope laid up for them in the heavens 
(Luke x. 20 ; Col. i. 5). Heaven and 
earth are mentioned in combination as 
the twofold sphere of their activities 
(Eph. i. 10, iii. 15 ; Rev. v. 3 ; I Cor. 
xv. 49 ; II Cor. v). On earth they are 
citizens of a commonwealth that is lo- 
cated in heaven (Phil. iii. 20). 



Eternal Life 81 

Monial Life as a Gift 

Men are brought within the sphere of 
the aeonial life, as within that of the 
kingdom or of salvation, by the free 
grace of God on the one hand, and on 
the other hand by their own faith, new 
birth, change of mind, obedience. The 
phrase of this kind which particularly 
connects itself with the aeonial life is the 
phrase which represents it as the gift of 
God or of Christ. Jesus says concerning 
His sheep : " I give unto them aeonial 
life, and they shall never perish." He 
says that the Father has given Him 
authority that " to them He should give 
aeonial life." His early disciples teach 
that " the free gift of God is aeonial life 
in Christ Jesus our Lord " ; " that God 
gave unto us aeonial life." See John x. 
28, xvii. 2 ; Rom. vi. 23 ; I John v. 11, 
cf. John vi. 68 and many other places. 

It should be added that these views 
concerning salvation and the aeonial life 
are characteristically the views of Jesus 



82 The Future Life 

Himself. Some of the phraseology is 
borrowed. The ideas are in part those 
with which his auditors were already- 
familiar. But He gives to them a new 
aspect in virtue of which they are pecul- 
iarly His own. A single peculiarity of 
grammar may be mentioned to illustrate 
this. When Jesus speaks of the outer 
darkness, for example, He always uses 
the article. The implication is : " this 
dreadful fact which our scribes are ac- 
customed to describe as the outer dark- 
ness/' He avoids this use of the article 
when He is speaking of the aeonial life. 
As in the other case, He is perhaps using 
an old phrase, but it is a phrase which He 
has made His own, and into which He 
has breathed His own meaning. The 
men of the New Testament follow Him 
in this usage. In speaking of " asonial 
life " they omit the article except in in- 
stances (e. g. I Tim vi. 12 ; I John i. 2, 
ii. 25 ; Acts xiii. 46) where something in 
the context requires that the phrase be 



Eternal Life 83 

noted as definite. What we have here 
is not merely a contemporary way of 
speaking, used by Jesus for convenience, 
but one which He has carefully marked 
with His approval. 



CHAPTER VII 

Realities in the Future Life 

f\ F necessity figurative language en- 
\^y ters largely into what any one 
says concerning a future life. It 
is not in all cases easy to draw the line 
between what is intended for fact and 
what for figure of speech. The facts 
are not all definable. On the border 
land of the finite and the infinite we are 
often at a loss to distinguish between 
what we know and what we only con- 
ceive. Even where we are sure that 
there is an underlying reality we are not 
always able to determine the character 
and limits of that reality. 
84 



Future Realities 85 

There is no doubt, however, that 
Jesus thought of the future life as a fact, 
including details that are facts, as reality 
and not merely ideal. In this chapter 
let us try to differentiate some of these 
elements of real fact. 

We need to pause a few seconds for 
a matter of definition. The future life, 
as we have seen, the aeonial life, is not 
properly a life in the sense of being a 
course of events, a succession of expe- 
riences, but rather life as distinguished 
from dead or inanimate being. Never- 
theless it is a being alive that is attended 
by a course of life, that has its succession 
of experiences. While we need to de- 
fine the two, and sometimes to think of 
them separately, neither of them exists 
unaccompanied by the other, and we 
need not be solicitous always to keep the 
ideas separate. 



86 The Future Life 

Negative Facts 

Concerning the future life of blessed- 
ness there are many negative statements 
which we may receive as expressing real- 
ities. We are told that there will be no 
sin in that life, no evil disappointments 
or sorrows, no treacheries, no falsehood, 
no corruption, no pain that is of the 
nature of evil. On the basis of this tes- 
timony we are accustomed to think of a 
condition of rest, where we lay down 
wearying burdens and wearing anxieties, 
where we are rid of strain and tension ; 
as calm after storm, haven after tem- 
pestuous voyage, peace after hard-fought 
campaign. All this, though negative, is 
in the light of the earliest Christian teach- 
ings to be regarded as genuine fact. 

Jesus gives us a few negative details of 
a different class. "The sons of this 
world (son) marry, . . . but they that 
are accounted worthy to attain to that 
world (aeon), and the resurrection from 



Future Realities 87 

the dead, neither marry nor are given in 
marriage " (Luke xx. 34, cf. Matt. xxii. 
30 ; Mark xii. 25). 

How far is it proper for us to regard 
this statement as typical, and extend it to 
other classes of human experiences ? To 
this question Jesus gives us no answer. 
We simply learn from Him that there are 
great contrasts as well as genuine resem- 
blances between the present life and the 
future life. 

Generalities 

Again, in our conception of future 
blessedness we are apt to be content with 
ideas that are merely general. We find 
statements of this character, or we draw 
inferences from the figures of speech 
that are used in the Scriptures. We think 
of heaven as characterized by joy, in con- 
trast with the pains of earth and the 
misery of hell ; as having whatever is 
desirable, to the exclusion of whatever is 
undesirable; as possessing happiness in dis- 
tinction from all kinds of wretchedness. 



88 The Future Life 

Or we speak of being at the right hand 
among the sheep, or of being forever 
with the Lord. These things are true 
and real, but they are generalities. Jesus 
says that " when they shall rise from 
the dead, they . . . are as angels in 
heaven/' that they " are sons of God, 
being sons of the resurrection " (Mark 
xii. 25 ; Luke xx. 36, cf. Matt. xxii. 30). 
We are to "bear the image of the 
heavenly " (I Cor. xv. 49), to touch 
aeonial things that are " unseen " and 
"not made with hands" (II Cor. iv. 18, 
v. 1). Here are realities, but what are 
these realities? 

It is plain that these various statements 
assume that there will be conscious indi- 
vidual existence in the future life. It is 
not a mere persistence of the type, nor 
a merging of finite being with infinite 
being, but it is we ourselves that persist, 
and we continue to be ourselves. This, 
according to the teaching of Jesus, is one 
of the realities of the future life. 



Future Realities 89 

A further reality is that the future life 
is social, not a persisting of isolated indi- 
vidual existence. Jesus says : " I come 
again and will receive you unto myself ; 
that where I am ye may be also" (John 
xiv. 3). "I will that where I am they also 
may be with me ; that they may behold 
my glory" (John xvii. 24). These chap- 
ters of John are saturated with this idea 
of the personal presence of the disciples 
with the Master, and that of course im- 
plies their presence one with another. 
" Because I live ye shall live also" 
(John xiv. 19). Paul learned from Jesus 
how to sum up his description in the 
words, " And so shall we ever be with 
the Lord" (I Thess. iv. 17). Notice the 
plural pronouns in these and like pas- 
sages. What room is there for doubt that 
Jesus and His apostles teach the doctrine 
of the reunion of those who have been 
parted by death ? 



90 The Future Life 

Teachings that are Literal, Positive, 
Specific 

There is one passage in which the 
realities of the future life are very re- 
markably grouped, the passage being I 
Corinthians xiii. 8-13. In it Paul does 
not use the word heaven, nor say ex- 
pressly that he is speaking of aeonial bless- 
edness. But he is speaking of a never 
failing, abiding, perfect future life, and 
we need not scruple to apply his words 
to the only imaginable life of that kind. 
We shall find it even more significant 
than the utterances that we are more in 
the habit of citing in connection with the 
future life — those that mention palms and 
crowns and white robes and golden harps. 
Of such phrases, provided we have a 
right to connect them with the future 
life, it is true that they express realities. 
But we are not always able to dissect 
them, and separate the reality from the 
metaphor. In contrast with this, Paul's 



Future Realities 91 

statements in I Corinthians xiii deal with 
simple, exact facts. The things men- 
tioned are real in their own character, 
and not merely in virtue of their standing 
for something else which is real. 

Further, in contrast with the negative 
statements we have been considering, 
this passage gives us positive facts : the 
things that are present in the perfect 
world, not the things that are absent; 
the experiences that are in that life rather 
than those that are not therein. We 
may come to it not to learn what the 
future life is not, but to learn what it is. 
And in contrast with the merely general 
statements we have been considering, 
these verses bring out four or five per- 
fectly specific facts as entering into the 
perfect life of the future. And in each 
of these points we shall find that Paul's 
teaching is a formulation of the teaching 
of Jesus. 



92 The Future Life 

Know/edge, Faith, Hope, Love 
First, Paul says that the gaining and 
possessing of knowledge is a factor in 
the experiences that attend the perfect 
life of the future. 

He declares, "Then shall I know 
adequately, even as also I have been 
known." He asserts that "then" we 
shall see "face to face/' that our know- 
ing then, as compared with now, will 
be like that of a mature person com- 
pared with childish notions. 

This necessarily implies the use, and 
therefore the exercise and training and 
growth, of our powers of knowing and 
thinking. The purpose Paul has in 
mind leads him here to emphasize 
the superiority of the knowledge and 
the knowing of the perfect world, as 
contrasted with that of the present 
world ; the fact that here we know in 
part, but shall then know adequately ; 
that here we see as in a mirror, perplex- 
ingly, with self reflected back as the 



Future Realities 93 

center of everything, while then we 
shall see in a direct, and no longer in a 
reflected light ; that here we understand 
as babies understand, while then our 
understanding will be ripe, so that 
"when that which is perfect is come, 
that which is in part shall be done 
away." But he does not say that the 
knowledge which comes in the perfect 
world is omniscience. He does not say 
that there is an effortless, passive condi- 
tion of being flooded with knowledge. 
The condition of things he describes is 
one in which we observe and learn and 
think, in which we put forth mental 
energy, governed by spiritual energy, 
and become conscious of the joy there 
is in energy and in achievement. 

There is no need of delaying to prove 
that in this Paul echoes the mind of 
Jesus, the mind of Jesus as expressed, for 
example, in such a typical utterance as 
this : " And this is life aeonial, that they 
should know Thee the only true God, 



94 The Future Life 

and Him whom thou didst send, even 
Jesus Christ " (John xvii. 3). If know- 
ing here means acknowledging, recog- 
nizing, still all recognition implies cogni- 
tion. 

Again, Paul teaches that faith will be 
an element in the course of living which 
attends the perfect future life. "Now 
abideth faith, hope, love, these three " 
(I Cor. xiii. 13). 

It is one of the curiosities of Christian 
religious thinking that at this point we 
have to stop to defend Paul's position 
against what has some claim to be called 
the common opinion of Christendom. 
Wherever the English language is 
spoken devout people sing with unction 
the hymn of Watts in celebration of 
the grace of love, including the stanza : 

"This is the grace that lives and sings 
When faith and hope shall cease ; 

9 Tis this shall strike our joyful strings 
In the sweet realms of bliss." 



Future Realities 95 

That is, we sing that there will be no 
faith in the sweet realms of bliss, and no 
hope there ; that love will remain, but 
faith and hope will cease. The same 
sentiment is found in a score of our 
familiar hymns, old and new, Protestant 
and hierarchical, and in sermons and 
meditations and prayers without number. 
In these utterances prayer is very com- 
monly and naturally joined with faith 
and hope as among the things that shall 
cease. 

"Hope shall change to glad fruition, 
Faith to sight, and prayer to praise." 

Multitudes say these things, and say 
them very devoutly, and imagine that 
they hold them to be true. Of course 
this arises from the confusing of faith 
with imperfect knowledge, from not 
distinguishing between the exercise of 
faith and certain struggles which faith 
has in the present life. But no one who 



96 The Future Life 

once stops to think the matter over will 
ever thereafter rejoice in the idea that 
prayer and faith and hope become obso- 
lete for us when we cross the threshold 
of the blessedness after death. Asking 
God for things and receiving them as His 
gift is delightful to us, and He says that it 
is delightful to Him ; is there in eternity 
an order of events in which His children 
no longer have occasion to ask Him for 
anything? In the exercise of faith one 
rests in the infinite strength of God be- 
cause that is a mighty good resting-place, 
and not merely because the exigencies 
of this present life deprive him of other 
resting-places. Is there any conceivable 
world in which the finite will be self- 
sufficient, and so will not need to trust 
the Infinite ? And life with no hope 
for the future would be dreary even to 
one on the topmost pinnacle of present 
happiness. 

We are glad to find, therefore, that 
Paul is explicit on this point. He says 



Future Realities 97 

that love is greater than faith and hope, 
but not that it is more lasting. The 
three alike are among the things that 
abide. 

What is faith ? A well-known Chris- 
tain symbol gives this definition : " Faith 
in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, 
whereby we receive and rest upon Him 
alone for salvation, as He is offered to 
us in the gospel." Faith is the receiving 
and resting upon Christ. Faith in any 
person or truth is the receiving and rest- 
ing upon that person or truth. Faith in 
the truth that one knows gives to knowl- 
edge the character of earnest conviction, 
makes the man a man of convictions. 
Faith is all this, as well as that grace 
which enables one to be patient in tribu- 
lation, and to trust in God for the par- 
don of his sins. 

If it had been called for by Paul's 
purpose, perhaps he would have given 
details concerning faith as well as con- 
cerning knowledge. In the environment 

G 



98 The Future Life 

of the perfect world there will doubtless 
be changed conditions for faith as well as 
for knowledge. But as long as men 
sing to Him that was slain and hath re- 
deemed us by His blood, so long will 
they need to trust in Him as redeemer 
from sin, no matter how many millions 
of years they may have left sin behind 
them. As long as human wisdom lacks 
something of being omniscience, so long 
will men need to trust in God for the 
things they do not understand. In all 
the ages in which there is fresh truth to 
acquire or fresh activity to engage in, 
faith will be requisite to bring life under 
the dominion of strong conviction and 
joyful earnestness. Doubtless there are 
certain struggles of faith that will cease 
when knowledge ceases to be imperfect; 
but faith itself will find an ever widen- 
ing scope, world without end. 

Does this teaching of Paul differ from 
that of the Master ? Answer such state- 
ments as the following: "This is the 



Future Realties 99 

will of my Father, that every one that 
beholdeth the Son, and believeth on 
Him, should have aeonial life ; and I will 
raise him up at the last day." "He that 
believeth hath aeonial life " (John vi. 40, 
47). Who does not see that in such 
utterances the aeonial life begins when 
the faith begins, and the faith endures as 
long as the aeonial life endures ? Faith 
is the act of possession by which we 
appropriate God's gifts. Eternal posses- 
sion implies eternal faith. And we are 
told " that God gave unto us aeonial life, 
and this life is in His Son ; he that hath 
the Son hath the life" (I John v. 11, 12). 
Yet again, Paul teaches that hope will 
be an element in the experiences of the 
perfect future life. We must not delay 
to expand this statement. In the present 
life we think much of those aspects of 
hope in which its light is set off by the 
contrast of dark shadows, but hope will 
not cease to be hope if it comes into the 
different environment of a world where 

L.0FC, 



ioo The Future Life 

there are no shadows that are baleful. 
The highest joy may be made more joy- 
ful by the anticipation of yet higher 
facilities for enjoying. 

Once more, Paul says that love will be 
an element of the life of the perfect 
future, and that it will be the most im- 
portant of the elements here mentioned. 

He does not say that love is the great- 
est thing in the world. Whether love is 
greater than justice or than holiness is, 
perhaps, a question of terms rather than 
of facts. At any rate love must submit 
to be ruled by justice, or it forfeits its 
prerogatives as love. What he says is 
that love enters into the course of life in 
the world of perfection as a larger ele- 
ment than knowledge or faith or hope, 
however important these may be. 

At this point, I think there is danger 
of going too far in making fine distinc- 
tions in regard to love. We make a 
mistake if we refine away all the natural 
flavor there is in the term. We know 



Future Realities 101 

what love is through our experiences of 
loving, and we have no other means of 
knowing. The habit of eager kindly 
feeling toward other beings — kindly feel- 
ing such as is the due of each — this, Paul 
says, is chief among the things that make 
heaven to be heaven. The friendliness 
toward all, in virtue of which we find all 
to be interesting, and desire to help all ; 
especial friendship in the case of a few ; 
passionate tenderness between wife and 
husband or between parent and child ; 
loyalty ; comradely warmth ; self-devot- 
ing compassion to the unfortunate ; re- 
ligious fellowship — these are forms of 
love with which we are now familiar. 
High above the others, but not exclud- 
ing them, is the love that exists between 
the believer and his Lord. The objects 
and the forms of love may change, to 
adapt them to the environment of the 
future life, but the passion itself will re- 
main as a permanent part of our being. 
And who can give a reason for doubting 



102 The Future Life 

that particular loves and friendships, exist- 
ing in that part of the aeonial life which is 
this side the grave, will continue in that 
part of it which is beyond the grave ? 

It would be superfluous to adduce 
even a single clause in proof that in 
what he says concerning love Paul is 
simply formulating the teaching of 
Jesus. But observe that Jesus connects 
the loving of God and our neighbor 
with aeonial life (Luke x. 25fT. ; Matt. 

xix. 1611.). 

Paul has not set out in this passage to 
name all the elements of the perfect life 
of the future. If he had, we do not 
know whether he would have men- 
tioned holiness and justice and obe- 
dience and altruistic self-renunciation by 
themselves, or whether he would have 
left all the virtues to be implied in the 
three graces. He certainly would agree 
with Jesus in making unselfishness an 
essential of the aeonial life (John xii. 25). 
That the perfect future life is joyful is 



Future Realties 103 

implied in the passage throughout, and 
everywhere else in the teachings of 
Jesus and of Paul. It is a life of mem- 
ories and of emotions and of interests ; 
witness what Jesus says about the joy in 
heaven over a repenting sinner (Luke 
xv. 7, 10), for you cannot utterly discon- 
nect the heaven of the redeemed from 
the heaven of the angels. The con- 
sciousness of divine approval is con- 
stantly presented (e. g. Matt. x. 32) as a 
particularly satisfying element of the 
heavenly existence. 

Heaven and Character 

These are the literal, specific, positive 
facts concerning the future life of bless- 
edness, as taught by Jesus and His first 
disciples. They present this life as 
something very different from the long 
holiday that some seem to imagine it to 
be. It is not a condition of inactivity, 
not idleness, not a never-ending play- 
spell. Its rest consists in freedom from 



104 The Future Life 

evil and disharmony and consequent 
strain, not in indolence or inertness. 
Constituted as we are, interminable qui- 
etude would be dreadfully irksome ; but 
instead of expecting this we may look 
forward to the eager exertion of all our 
energies ; to the invigorating pursuit and 
mastery of truth ; to a confident, victo- 
rious resting in truth and in right and in 
God, giving us assured convictions, and 
leading us to earnest action ; to hope 
ever, forecasting a future that is more 
and more happy as the ages go by ; to 
the gladness of love, in its manifold 
forms ; to divine approval ; to whatever 
else enters into the most complete fill- 
ing oat of our personality. 

There have been those who have 
exploited the idea of salvation by char- 
acter in opposition to that of salvation 
by free grace. The teaching we have 
just traversed presents to us the idea of a 
salvation which is wholly of free grace, 
but which consists essentially in char- 



Future Realities 105 

acter. In this salvation heaven is char- 
acter, and character is either heaven or 
hell. A certain type of character is de- 
termined by one's having knowledge ac- 
cording to his ability, and exercising 
faith and hope and love. And char- 
acter as thus determined is or implies 
everything, all else, if sundered from 
character, being nothing. 

Some one has admirably said that when 
we have best learned the doctrine of 
Jesus we think of heaven less as a place 
for saints to go to when they die than as 
an ideal for us all to live by. But even 
so, heaven cannot furnish us the ideal 
which we need except by being itself a 
reality. We have noted the nature of 
the future realities in the case of those 
who enter into the aeonial life. What 
they may be in the case of those who do 
not so enter can be best considered when 
we reach the consideration of the terms 
in which Jesus presents them. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Physical Expressions for the 
Future Life 

rHE phraseology used in speak- 
ing of the future life is of great 
variety. In this chapter we will 
take a general view of certain ways of 
speaking which I call " physical expres- 
sions " rather than "figures of speech," 
in order not to prejudice the question of 
their relations to reality. Deferring to 
future chapters such of these expressions 
as refer to the resurrection and the judg- 
ment day, we now take up those that 
refer to such matters as the attire, the 
1 06 



Physical Representations 107 

occupations, the pains and pleasures, 
the place of residence, of the redeemed 
and the unredeemed in the future 
world. 

The New Jerusalem Imagery 

The expressions that have found their 
way most abundantly into our hymns 
and other devotional utterances are those 
connected with the new Jerusalem — the 
streets paved with gold, the walls of 
precious stones, the gates of pearl, the 
water of life, the trees beside it, the crys- 
tal sea, the holiday throngs of worship- 
pers, the songs they sing, their crowns, 
their white raiment, their golden harps, 
and all the other expressions for abun- 
dance and magnificence and rejoicing 
which connect themselves with these. 
The fact that this imagery is found prin- 
cipally in the book of Revelation, and not 
directly in the utterances of Jesus, is not 
a sufficient reason why we should here 



108 The Future Life 

omit the consideration of it ; for, within 
limits, we have a right to infer the teach- 
ings of Jesus from those of His early dis- 
ciples. Nor are we precluded from con- 
sidering these expressions by the fact that 
some scholars now refer the statements 
of the book of Revelation to matters 
occurring on this earth rather than to an- 
other state of existence ; for, even if one 
goes to an extreme in approving this 
interpretation, it still remains true that 
there are close analogies between the 
terrestrial and the celestial future of the 
kingdom. Nevertheless we must here 
content ourselves with the merest cur- 
sory mention, and for two reasons. First, 
the limits of this volume afford no room 
for adequate treatment. Second, we are 
now concerned with the realities in the 
case, rather than with the modes in which 
they are uttered. 

It is sufficient to say that in all the 
Christian ages, alike in the earliest songs 
of the fathers and in the latest Sunday 



Physical Representations 109 

School jingles, when devout persons sing 
of Jerusalem the golden and the palms 
of glory and the harps and the crowns, 
they are conscious that they are using 
this splendid imagery in an effort to ex- 
press realities which they nevertheless 
think of as beyond expression. Religion 
is contact of the finite with the infinite. 
Religious utterance is sometimes con- 
sciously an attempt to utter the unutter- 
able. If we say that we do not know, 
mechanically, the nature of the things 
described in these phrases, that does not 
diminish our conviction that they are 
actual facts. Probably no two worship- 
ping minds conceive them alike, but 
they are not on that account meaning- 
less or unreal. They stand for the vari- 
ous aspects of the realities of the future 
life — such realities as we have glanced 
at in the preceding chapter. If we 
do not know what more they stand 
for, we need not be ashamed of our 
ignorance. 



1 1 o The Future Life 

Heaven as Spoken of by Jesus 
Connected with the New Jerusalem 
presentations, on a somewhat different 
footing from them, is Christ's own men- 
tion of heaven as the abode of God, and 
the place of future reward. It is beyond 
dispute that He deals much in phrase- 
ology of this kind, and that He applies 
to the heaven of reward the terms that 
naturally denote space and place. 

This usage has already been spoken 
of in our fourth chapter. The words 
heaven, heavens, heavenly, occur scores 
of times in the Gospels. Jesus teaches 
us to pray to our Father in heaven, with 
the suggestion of a possible home for 
the children in heaven with the Father. 
It is before His Father in heaven that 
He will confess those who confess Him 
before men (Matt. x. 32, 33). He in- 
sists on our laying up our treasures in 
heaven (Matt. vi. 19 and four other 
places). No one fails to identify heaven, 
in some way, with the paradise to 



Physical Representations 1 1 1 

which He would receive the dying thief 
(Luke xxiii. 43), or with the Father's 
house and the mansions to which He 
promises to receive His followers (John 
xiv. 3). He identifies heaven with the 
aeonial life, and the narrow way that 
leads to life is the road to heaven (Matt, 
xix. 16-21, vii. 13). 

In my boyhood I used to hear plain 
Christian people discuss the question 
whether heaven is a place or a state. 
There can be no doubt that Jesus 
teaches, verbally, that heaven is a place. 
But when you ask where that place is, 
and what sort of a place it is, the an- 
swers are not so obvious. Physically, 
heaven is the sky. But what is the sky ? 
At first thought it is simple to speak of 
the personality of a dying person as pass- 
ing off through space to some other lo- 
cality, and remaining there ; but is this, 
on reflection, a satisfactory idea of the 
matter? Some have held that heaven is 
located in the sun, or in some of the 



H2 The Future Life 

planets or stars, or in the earth after it 
has been renovated and fitted up for the 
purpose. The more we question, I 
think, the more unsatisfied we become 
with such answers as we can obtain. 
The conception of heaven certainly in- 
cludes that of the realities spoken of in 
the last chapter, but how much do we 
know as to what it includes beyond 
those realities ? 

It is clear that Jesus regards heaven as 
a synonym for the aeonial life, and espe- 
cially for that part of it which lies 
beyond the grave. It is clear that He 
teaches that its joys include the posses- 
sion of the heavenly temper, and associa- 
tion with God Himself and with persons 
of kindred spirit. It is clear that He 
regards it as the continuing of habits and 
conditions formed before death, and 
as the successful exercise of personal ac- 
tivities. His language is doubtless figur- 
ative, but underneath He finds realities, 
which He emphasizes by variously pre- 



Physical Representations I 1 3 

senting them to the reason and the im- 
agination. How far beyond this are we 
able to go in understanding this part of 
His teachings ? 

Angels, Good and Evil 

Angels are conspicuous in the teach- 
ings of Jesus. He often speaks of them 
as in heaven, or as performing commis- 
sions for the Father or the Son. Any 
one, with a concordance, may find in- 
stances. In one place Jesus speaks of 
c< the devil and his angels " and the 
aeonial fire prepared for them (Matt. 
xxv. 41). Elsewhere in the New Testa- 
ment this is amplified (Rev. xii. 7 ; 
II Pet. ii. 4 ; Jude 6), with the implica- 
tion that there are heavenly angels who 
have apostatized. The angels, good and 
evil, are spoken of in personal terms, and 
in terms of space and locality. Men of 
the past, John Milton and a multitude 
of others, have worked out minute 
schemes of information concerning the 



U4 The Future Life 

angelic hierarchy, their rank and order, 
their personal character, their occupa- 
tions, their history. Our generation is 
not addicted to overrating the elements 
of reality in this information ; and yet 
it is certain that when Jesus spoke 
concerning angels He regarded His 
words, however figurative, as standing 
for something that is real. 

Certainly He nowhere says that hu- 
man beings will be transformed in the 
hereafter into angels. When we sing 
"I want to be an angel," the figure of 
speech is all our own. But in many 
places He connects the companionship 
and the cooperation of the angels with 
the life that the redeemed lead in 
heaven, and He dooms the lost to the 
companionship of the evil angels. 

The Future World of Punishment 

As we have seen in Chapter IV, Jesus 
uses particularly severe language for in- 
dicating the future condition of those 



Physical Representations 115 

who do not attain to aeonial life. The 
rich man in the underworld is "in tor- 
ments," "in anguish," begging that one 
" may dip the tip of his finger in water, 
and cool my tongue" (Luke xvi. 23-25). 
Jesus speaks of " the gehenna of fire," 
the "aeonial fire," the "unquenchable 
fire," the inescapable "judgment of ge- 
henna," "the outer darkness," the 
"whole body cast into gehenna," the 
destroying " both soul and body in ge- 
henna " (Matt. v. 22, xviii. 8, 9, xxv. 41, 
xxiii. 33 et al\ cf. Luke iii. 17). We 
have noted the fact that phrases of this 
sort are mostly, perhaps exclusively, the 
current phrases that were employed by 
the scribes, and that they are pretty gen- 
erally accompanied by the definite ar- 
ticle, indicating that Jesus uses them as 
quoted phrases. Apparently He regards 
them as figures of speech, but also regards 
them as standing for facts that are as real 
as they are dreadful. What can we ascer- 
tain concerning these dreadful realities ? 



n6 The Future Life 

We may draw certain inferences con- 
cerning them from the analogy of the 
realities of the aeonial life, already 
considered in Chapter VII, and these we 
shall find confirmed by other utterances 
of Jesus. 

Either the saved and the unsaved are 
alike in having conscious existence after 
death, or they are not. If they are not, 
the analogy between the two terminates 
in an utter contrast. But if both have 
conscious existence, then the cases of 
the two are in some points parallel, and 
at other points in contrast. 

They are alike in that the future life 
is in relations of continuity with the 
present, that the deeds of the present 
through natural processes result in future 
consequences, that the remembrance of 
the present will persist in the future, 
that the character now built up will be 
carried over into the future. And they 
are in contrast if the deeds of the pres- 
ent, the things to be remembered, the 



Future Punishment 1 1 7 

character, are those of the asonial life in 
the one case and not in the other. 

Note that their being in contrast is the 
real fact stated in most of the severe ut- 
terances of Jesus, alike those that have 
been referred to and others, such as 
those concerning the sheep and the 
goats, the aeonial life and the aeonial pun- 
ishment of the judgment day. These 
passages announce the contrast as a con- 
trast. They emphasize the separation of 
the two classes. They set forth the 
success of those who enter into life as 
over against the failure of those who do 
not enter. The punishment consists in 
the failure, the separation, the contrast. 
The consciousness of failure is a part of 
the punishment. Take for example a 
representative passage in Luke (xiii. 
22-30). The saved are represented as 
having entered in at the narrow door. 
They are recognized by the Master of 
the house. The others seek to enter, 
and are unable. The Master refuses to 



1 1 8 The Future Life 

recognize them, and orders them to de- 
part. The climax is reached in the 
mention of their disappointment, their 
consciousness of defeat: "There shall 
be the weeping and gnashing of teeth, 
when ye shall see Abraham and Isaac 
and Jacob and all the prophets in the 
kingdom of God, and yourselves cast 
forth without." 

We are in danger of perverting our 
conception of this matter by confining it 
to one aspect of the case. When a boy 
is naughty and is whipped for it, there 
may be no connection between the 
naughtiness and the whipping except 
through the personal judgment and will 
of the punisher — no particular reason, 
for example, why the punishment should 
be the whipping and not something 
else. This is a case of punishment pure 
and simple, suffering inflicted as an ex- 
pression of disapproval for wrongdoing. 
But a wise parent will often prefer a dif- 
ferent way of punishing — that of leaving 



Future Punishment 119 

the child to suffer the natural conse- 
quences of his wrongdoing. In this 
case the punishment is punishment as 
really as in the other, but it is also a mat- 
ter of natural sequence. 

If we think of God's punishing from 
the point of view of a whipping arbi- 
trarily given after the wrong was done, 
we are likely to misconceive the whole 
matter ; we shall have a correcter view if 
we think of the wise Father as accom- 
plishing His purpose of reward or punish- 
ment mainly through His adjusting of 
natural sequences to that end. This may 
not be a complete view of the subject, 
but it is the part of the field that is most 
open to our exploration. 

For illustration, suppose the case of 
three parents who have passed into the 
future world, and who look back through 
memory on the way in which they dealt 
with their families in the present world. 
The first remembers his having honestly 
endeavored, by divine grace, to care well 



1 20 The Future Life 

for his loved ones, and to surround them 
with good influences. The second re- 
members having been negligent in these 
duties, with disastrous results ; but he also 
remembers having repented later, and of 
having done his best to retrieve his faults, 
with the aid of divine grace. The third 
remembers unrepentantly his failure in 
duty and the ruin that has resulted there- 
from to his loved ones. Who does not 
see that for the first two there is blessed- 
ness in their remembering of the past, 
in their consciousness of the good they 
have accomplished and the character they 
have won, and in the approval of God 
and the good ? Who does not see that 
for the third there is torture in remem- 
bering the past and in the present con- 
sciousness of personal meanness and of 
deserved disapproval ? Or if he is too cal- 
lous to feel the torture, that indicates a de- 
gree of personal degradation that is worse 
than the worst misery. In these sup- 
posed instances we take a look at certain 



Future Punishment 121 

perfectly real materials for the construc- 
tion of a heaven or a hell. The brightest 
imagery in the Scriptures does not exag- 
gerate the blessedness of a heaven made 
up of such experiences. And the hell 
thus indicated is as dreadful as the words 
of Jesus concerning the gehenna of fire. 
According to Jesus heaven is success 
in the highest meaning of the term, and 
hell is failure. It is the failure made by 
him who has not entered into life. It is 
failure in point of achievement ; he has 
not come to the light, and so he remains in 
darkness. It is failure in point of charac- 
ter, the failure of one who, though he 
gains the whole world has forfeited him- 
self. It is the failure which a man makes 
when he is left to himself, and to the in- 
fluences of natural deterioration. To be 
consciously and hopelessly guilty and 
mean, to be covered with shame and yet 
remain unrepentant — that is hellfire. 
Remorse is torment. To be guilty and 
mean without shame and without- re- 



122 The Future Life 

morse is contemptible to a degree that 
is worse than any torment can be. And 
the failure spoken of by Jesus is also fail- 
ure in point of companionship. He em- 
phasizes the idea of separation between 
the righteous and the wicked, each going 
to his own place, each seeking the society 
for which he is fit. 

Evidently we are cognizant of certain 
realities which may well be those in- 
tended by Jesus in the severe language 
He uses. We need not affirm that items 
like these exhaust His meaning; but 
they certainly illustrate it. And we have 
here no punishment that consists of an 
arbitrary infliction of pain or harm. Stern 
and dreadful though the realities may be, 
they are of a class with which we are 
familiar. The results of our deeds pur- 
sue us. From the thrill or the sting of 
an approving or a disapproving con- 
science who can flee ? 



Future Punishment 123 

" As I thought of my former living, 

And the judgment day to be, 
Sitting alone with my conscience 

Seemed judgment enough for me." 



In His utterances on the subject Jesus 
divides mankind into two classes and no 
more. There can be no doubt of the 
correctness of this division, but let us not 
misapprehend it. It does not imply that 
there is precisely the same reward to 
all who repent, and precisely the same 
details of failure to all others. The 
aeonial life begins before death. The 
line of division is drawn already. Perhaps 
the future will not be so unlike the 
present as many imagine. There is the 
same room in the future as in the pres- 
ent for infinite variety of kind and de- 
gree on both sides of the dividing line. 
If one believes that the line of division 
is fixed at death, so that thereafter there 
is no crossing from one camp to the 
other, that does not prevent his thinking 



124 The Future Life 

that both here and hereafter there are 
some on each side who are relatively 
near the line, and others who are farther 
away. There is nowhere any injustice 
nor cruelty nor unkindness in any pen- 
alty inflicted by our heavenly Father. 



CHAPTER IX 

Eternity and Immortality 

#) Y the phrase " eternal life " many 
J£j understand a course of life un- 
limited in duration. To escape 
defining the term, we have thus far 
avoided the use of it, substituting for it 
the transferred phrase "aeonial life." I 
hope that we have used this phrase of- 
ten enough so that it has raised in our 
minds its own proper suggestions. It 
does not properly denote a course of 
life, but the fact of being alive, though 
it is true that being alive implies a life in 
the sense of a course of events. The 

125 



1 26 The Future Life 

term aeonial is not merely a term of du- 
ration ; it denotes the nature of the new 
life, the life of the kingdom, in which 
one may participate both before and af- 
ter death. Thus far we have avoided 
the question whether the term also 
denotes or implies unlimited duration. 
The time has now come for considering 
that question. Does Jesus teach that 
the aeonial state, whether of life or its 
opposite, extends on without limit of 
time ? 

Eternity according to the Prophets and 
the Scribes 

The stem idea of the Hebrew noun 
olam, eternity, is that of hiding or being 
hidden. It presents eternity as duration 
the limits of which are hidden. It im- 
ples looking forward into the future and 
backward into the past, from some point 
of time, and seeing no limits of duration 
that are to be taken into the account. 
It is silent as to any such thing as abso- 



Eternity and Immortality 127 

lutely limitless duration, but from the 
idea of duration that is practically limit- 
less it never varies. The psalmist says, 
" I have called to mind thy judgments 
from eternity " (cxix. 52), and thus dates 
them at a time so far in the past that its 
limits need not be considered. The ser- 
vant whose ear has been bored by his 
master "shall serve him to eternity." 
That is, the duration of the service 
shall have practically no limit. Omitting 
all fine distinctions, the Old Testament 
word regards as eternal that which has 
no recognizable limit of duration. 

Under the influence, perhaps, of 
Greek thought the scribes introduced 
variant uses of the word. They employ 
it in the plural — a usage that is rare in 
the Old Testament. Strictly speaking 
there can be but one eternity, for eter- 
nity includes all duration. From an- 
other point of view, however, there are 
as many eternities as there are points of 
time from which we can look backward 



128 The Future Life 

or forward. Thus conceived, eternities 
are distinguished not by their bound- 
aries, for they have none, but by their 
centers. In Hebrew " the wilderness " is 
the boundless pasturage country sur- 
rounding the arable territory of Pales- 
tine, while the wilderness of Beersheba is 
that part of the wilderness near Beer- 
sheba, and the wilderness of Tekoa is 
that part near Tekoa, and " this wilder- 
ness " is the part near where the speaker 
happens to be. Analogously "an eter- 
nity " may be that part of unlimited time 
that is conceived of as adjacent to some 
event. In particular " this eternity " 
is the part of eternity which the speaker 
thinks of as now present, as distin- 
guished from " the eternity to come/' a 
significant part of eternity which is still 
future. 

Further, events occur in time just as 
in space, and the word that denotes the 
duration may come to be used to denote 
also the aggregate of the events. The 



Eternity and Immortality 129 

scribes practised this usage. To denote 
the present with its course of life, its 
aggregate of events, they used the term 
"this eternity," while by the term "the 
eternity to come " they expressed a cer- 
tain conception of the future with its ag- 
gregate of events, its course of life, espe- 
cially its recompenses. 

In English we have this same concep- 
tion of a course of human life or an ag- 
gregate of human events occurring in 
time, and, unfortunately, we express it 
by the term " world," the term which 
properly denotes the aggregate of hu- 
man events occurring in space. Thus 
we recognize a time-world as well as a 
space-world, and we habitually confuse 
the two. 

" Mon " in the New Testament 

In the New Testament the Greek 
noun ceon and its adjectives stand for the 
olam of the Old Testament and the 
scribes. Like the Hebrew word, they 

I 



130 The Future Life 

denote duration without limits that are 
to be taken into the account. They are 
used of the past {e. g. Luke i. 70 ; Acts 
iii. 21, xv. 18 ; John ix. 32), but much 
oftener of the future. They are prevail- 
ingly translated by such words as for- 
ever, eternal, everlasting. They always 
denote duration, but sometimes also the 
aggregate of facts or events conceived 
of as included in duration. When so 
used our versions translate by " world." 
"The care of the aeon and the deceitful- 
ness of riches choke the word/' "The 
sons of this aeon are for their own gener- 
ation wiser than the sons of the light 
(Matt. xiii. 22 ; Luke xvi. 8). In par- 
ticular, the present aeon is often con- 
trasted with the aeon to come (Matt. xii. 
32 ; Luke xx. 34), the New Testament 
here following the usage of the scribes. 
In classical Greek the word "aeon" 
sometimes denotes the term of a human 
life, with variant meanings somewhat 
like those of the English word "age." 



Eternity and Immortality 131 

In English we use the word "age," just 
as we use the word "world/' to denote 
a period of duration with the aggregate 
of events included in it. So we are not 
surprised to find the word " aeon " in 
the New Testament sometimes trans- 
lated by " age " (e. g. Eph. ii. 7 ; Col. i. 
26). The revised versions substitute 
" age " for " world " either in text or 
margin. 

In explaining these terms a good deal 
has been said as to an alleged Jewish 
conception of a messianic "age" with 
limits definitely fixed ; but the proof is 
inadequate. The phrase which our 
English versions translate "the last days" 
nowhere has a meaning more definite 
than that of future time when Jehovah 
fulfils His promises. No " age " men- 
tioned in the New Testament has deter- 
minable beginning or end. Even the 
" present aeon " and the " aeon to come " 
have no boundaries that are indicated ; 
they are the two parts of the one insep- 



132 The Future Life 

arable ason rather than two different 
sons. If one substitutes " agelasting ' 
for " everlasting " he will still have the 
idea of duration without cognizable 
limit. Whatever you make of " the end 
of the world," "the consummation of 
the age," at least Jesus does not speak of 
it as the end of the conscious existence 
of any one ; He speaks of the seonial life 
and the asonial punishment as following, 
not as terminated by, the final judg- 
ment (Matt. xxv. 41, 46). 

He and His early disciples make the 
same point in various phraseology. 
When Paul says that love " abideth " and 
"never faileth " (I. Cor. xiii. 13, 8), we 
have the idea of unlimited duration 
given in other words. According to 
Mark (iii. 29) Jesus says that he who 
blasphemes against the Holy Spirit "hath 
never forgiveness " (hath not forgiveness 
unto the aeon), "but is guilty of an asonial 
sin." In Matthew's record (xii. 32) the 
same utterance is : "It shall not be for- 



Eternity and Immortality 133 

given him neither in this aeon nor in that 
which is to come." We must not delay 
to multiply instances. 

Analogies to Personal Immortality 

The teaching of Jesus agrees with the 
natural expectations that men form. 
The current doctrine of the perpetuity 
of matter and of energy is not a doctrine 
of immortality, but it has a bearing there- 
upon. Each atom of matter and each 
vibration of force in my body — apart 
from supposable creation or annihila- 
tion by Deity — will in some form endure 
forever. And this, however empha- 
sized in recent thinking, is not a new 
discovery. Men have always had some 
glimmering knowledge of it. Whatever 
be true of the man himself, the constit- 
uent parts of him are held to be eternal. 
Here is at all events a certain kind of 
endless existence, to say nothing of the 
suggestion that the personality is likely 
to be one of the elements that persist. 



134 The Future Life 

Further, the idea of the immor- 
tality of a person's influence is an idea 
with which men have been familiar in 
all historic time. Some effort of mine 
affects another person, and through him 
another, and so on without end. Very 
ancient is the habit of illustrating this by 
the pebble dropped in the middle of the 
lake, and raising a ripple that becomes 
wider and wider till it passes out of 
sight. Endless influence is not personal 
immortality, but it may serve for illus- 
trating it. 

This becomes conspicuous when we 
think of influence that is attended by 
fame, by reputation. Think of such 
men as Homer or Isaiah or Caesar or 
Nero or Judas. Each has an influence 
over us who are now living, the same as 
if he were alive among us, an influence 
that is an unquestioned reality. It is an 
influence that is perfectly individual. 
The men of the past are as distinct to us 
as are our contemporaries with whom 



Eternity and Immortality 135 

we talk. The influence of some of 
them is for good, and of others for evil ; 
toward some we cherish feelings of ap- 
proval and admiration and love, and to- 
wards others feelings of loathing and 
execration. If we conceive of them as 
conscious of the good or the evil they 
are now doing, or of the estimation in 
which they are held, that constitutes 
reward or punishment for them. So far 
as we can see, this condition of reward 
or punishment is eternal. 

Literature recognizes no greater motif 
than this. We are very familiar with 
the honors paid to those whom the 
poets or the historians have made im- 
mortal. And who is there who does 
not sometimes feel stirred by the wish to 
do something by which he will be re- 
membered after he is dead ? The end- 
lessness of combined influence and 
reputation presents so many points in 
common with personal immortality that 
one is sometimes taken for the other. I 



136 The Future Life 

think that many read George Eliot's fine 
poem on "The Choir Invisible"* as 
if it were an expression of the yearn- 
ing for personal immortality. But it 
falls short of that, splendidly fine and 
worthy as it is. And it further differs 
from the teaching of Christ in that it is 
an aristocratic aspiration for something 
that can be attained by perhaps one in a 
million, and not a democratic aspiration 
for a blessedness open to all who love 
God and their fellow men. 



* " O may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence ; live 
In pulses stirred to generosity, 
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
For miserable aims that end with self, 
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
And with their mild persistence urge man's search 
To vaster issues. So to live is heaven. 
***** This is life to come, 
Which martyred men have made more glorious 
For us who strive to follow. May I reach 
That purest heaven, be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 



Eternity and Immortality 137 

Involved in these analogies is the idea 
of a future recompense that is endless. 
There will be good or harm without 
limit of time as the result of what I do. 
Under the natural law of continuity here 
is eternal reward or retribution, inde- 
pendent of the question whether I shall 
eternally have a consciousness for enjoy- 
ing and enduring. We cannot think of 
the future except as unlimited in dura- 
tion. We think of it as in continuity 
with the present ; can the sequence be 
less than perpetual ? And if it is attended 
by consciousness, if a human personality 
is a force persisting after death, is there 
any reason for expecting a cessation of 
that persistence ? If memory plays a 
part in the recompenses of the future, 
the things remembered will of course 
never change ; will the remembering 

Beget the smiles that have no cruelty — 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused 
And in diffusion ever more intense. 
So shall I join the choir invisible, 
Whose music is the gladness of the world." 



138 The Future Life 

ever cease ? We cannot think of the dis- 
tinction between right and wrong as hav- 
ing a time limit. In fine, these analogies 
indicate an eternity of ill consequences 
for the wrongdoer as dreadful as that in- 
dicated in the teachings of Jesus. They 
differ from His teachings mainly in the 
fact that they have no offer of salvation 
to make to the repentant. 

Different Views of Immortality 

In childhood I came into contact with 
a little Sunday School book which stirred 
me up to a good deal of thinking. It had 
pictures of a worm and a chrysalis and 
a butterfly, and by these illustrated the 
transformation from one form of life to 
another through an apparent interven- 
ing death. The drawing of such analo- 
gies is not a new thing. It was done in 
times long antedating Christianity. The 
idea has been that immortality is natural 
to man, that perpetuity of personal exist- 



Eternity and Immortality 139 

ence rests on the same basis with the 
perpetuity of matter or force or influence, 
that a human soul once in conscious ex- 
istence remains so eternally. 

Does this agree with the teaching of 
Jesus (see Chapter VI above) that the 
aeonial life is an especial gift from God 
to all who repent, believe, love, obey, 
and to no others ? * Is not this teach- 
ing that immortality is a gift, to be had 
only by its being bestowed, in conflict 
with the view that all human persons 
are by nature immortal? The usual 
answer has been that the gift of 
eternal life does not consist in the per- 
petuating of conscious existence, but in 
rendering that existence a blessed one ; 
that every human person lives after death 
in the sense of being conscious, but not 
necessarily in the sense of having a 



* From this statement there should be no dissent. The 
received Evangelical teaching is that the blessed immortality 
becomes the possession of all who will take it ; and Universal- 
ists do not teach that it ever becomes the possession of any 
who refuse to take it. 



140 The Future Life 

beatific life ; that human life does not be- 
come eternal life except by the receiving 
of God's gift, and that some remain 
without the gift forever ; that there is 
such a thing as asonial death, and that it 
consists in eternal conscious existence 
without agonial life. 

Along with this question goes another, 
that of probation. Jesus and His dis- 
ciples say that men are to be judged for 
the deeds done in the body, not for deeds 
done after death. They urge men to a 
present change of mind, to immediate en- 
trance upon the aeonial life, never to the 
posthumous performing of these duties. 
Those who in the judgment go to the 
right hand are those who in the pres- 
sent life minister to Christ in the person 
of His disciples. These teachings sug- 
gest the question of the relation of im- 
mortality to the crisis which we call 
death. The received doctrine has been 
that probation ends at death or before 
death ; that our opportunities and the 



Eternity and Immortality 141 

disposal we have made of them then 
become facts of the past, fixed and 
unchangeable ; that character has then 
become fixed beyond recall, and that its 
recompenses are then irrevocably deter- 
mined. 

At once a great difficulty arises. If one 
conceives of punishment as an arbitrary 
infliction of suffering, then the idea of 
its lasting forever is horrible. In order to 
escape this difficulty some hold that 
aeonial punishment is not unlimited in 
duration. I do not think that their sol- 
utions of the problem are successful. 
The difficulty must be met by reason- 
able definition of the nature of the re- 
compenses of the future, and not by im- 
possible attempts to cut short eternal 
sequences. Yet it seems to me that cer- 
tain differences concerning this matter 
are less vital than they have sometimes 
been thought to be, that it is a matter in 
which men of different minds are likely 
to differ, and that it is here more impor- 



142 The Future Life 

tant to emphasize our agreements than 
our differences. 

Jesus does not teach that there is 
eternal punishment for temporary sin- 
ning. What He seems to teach is that 
there may be endless sinning, involving 
endless penalty (Mark iii. 29). If one 
holds that God follows men in the future 
state of punishment with restoring influ- 
ences until many or all escape into aeonial 
life, he may hold it consistently with the 
principle that endless punishment is the 
inevitable consequence of remaining end- 
lessly unrepentant. 

Some have taught that the unrepentant 
are annihilated at death, or at the final 
ceasing of their probation, but more cur- 
rent now is the doctrine that there is no 
natural principle of permanence in per- 
sonality ; that the natural order for the 
elements that constitute a human person 
is that they simply disintegrate, and be- 
come stuff for new constructions ; and that 
this is what happens except in the case 



Eternity and Immortality 143 

of those who receive the gift of aeonial 
life. That is, they deny natural immor- 
tality, and affirm that the gift consists in 
immortality itself, and not merely in its 
being made blessed. Some teach that 
God only has immortality (I Tim. vi. 16), 
and that He gives immortality not to all 
men as created in His image, but only to 
those who become entitled to aeonial life. 
Those not so entitled, they say, follow 
the same course with other animal and 
vegetable beings. Having served their 
purpose they decay, becoming waste 
materials to be reutilized by the great 
Constructor. 

One might say that ceasing from con- 
scious existence is itself eternal punish- 
ment, and so comes within the description 
given by Jesus. But what can one say 
concerning the expressions in which 
Jesus represents the unsaved as exercis- 
ing consciousness in the future state? 
Is oriental figure of speech elastic enough 
so that the experiences of Dives, and the 



144 The Future Life 

weeping and gnashing of teeth can be 
reconciled with the idea of the cessation 
of personal experience ? That a person 
who might have had the joyous successes 
of eternal life should instead go to decay 
is matter for painful lamentation from an 
onlooker, or from the person himself 
looking forward to his fate ; has Jesus by 
figure of speech put this wailing into the 
disintegrated person's own mouth, in 
order to present the matter vividly ? 

The true solution is to be sought rather 
in rightly conceiving of the nature of the 
recompenses of the future.* It makes a 
difference whether one thinks of punish- 
ment as ex post facto torment, or takes the 
view of it presented in the preceding 
chapters. 



* A distinguished evangelist is reported in the newspapers 
as saying : " Hell is the hospital for the incurables of the uni- 
verse. Hell is the insane asylum of the universe, where men 
and women remember." 



CHAPTER X 

The Resurrection of the Body 

rHE Christian creeds couple the 
resurrection of the body and the 
life everlasting. Other Christian 
utterances specifically join the resurrec- 
tion and the final judgment. There have 
been utterances of this kind that were 
more serious than sober. The theme has 
proved an attractive one to the imagina- 
tion, and in treating it the ponderous 
structures of the western imagination 
have put the Orient to shame. On the 
foundation of the oriental pictures given 
us by Jesus and Paul and their associates 

J 145 



146 The Future Life 

the church has built the dies irce hymns 
in all their solemn variety, and in poems 
and sermons detail after detail has been 
added. A good illustration of this is the 
passage so often quoted from Dr. Young. 

" Now monuments prove faithful to their trust, 
And render back their long committed dust ; 
Now charnels rattle ; scattered limbs and all 
The various bones, obsequious to the call, 
Self-moved advance ; the neck perhaps to meet 
The distant head, the distant head the feet. 
Dreadful to view ! See, through the dusky sky 
Fragments of bodies in confusion fly, 
To distant regions journeying, there to claim 
Deserted members and complete the frame. 
The severed head and trunk shall join once more, 
Though realms now rise between and oceans roar. 
The trumpet sound each vagrant moat shall hear, 
Or fixed in earth, or if afloat in air, 
Obey the signal wafted in the wind, 
And not one sleeping atom lag behind." 

In the " Columbian Orator," a book of 
selections from which the boys of the 
first half of the nineteenth century 
learned the pieces they declaimed at 



Resurrection of the Body 147 

school, these lines of Dr. Young are 
quoted and amplified in an " Extract from 
a Sermon on the Day of Judgment/' 

"Now the nations under ground be- 
gin to stir. There is a noise and a shak- 
ing among the dry bones. The dust is 
all alive, and in motion, and the globe 
breaks and trembles as with an earth- 
quake, while this vast army is working 
its way through, and bursting into life. 
The ruins of human bodies are scat- 
tered far and wide, and have passed 
through many and surprising transforma- 
tions. . . . And now, at the sound 
of the trumpet, they shall all be collected, 
wherever they were scattered ; all prop- 
erly sorted and united, however they 
were confused ; atom to its fellow atom, 
bone to its fellow bone." 

" The living shall start and be changed, 
and the dead rise at the sound. The 
dust that was once alive and formed a 
human body, whether it flies in the air, 
floats in the ocean, or vegetates on earth, 



148 The Future Life 

shall hear the new-creating fiat. Where- 
ever the fragments of the human frame 
are scattered, this all-penetrating call shall 
reach and speak them into life." 

I add another citation. It is from a 
sermon published in April, 1906. 

" To believe in design without a de- 
signer . . . requires much more child- 
ish credulity than to believe that the great 
First Cause could resurrect the body after 
long centuries of decay. So the fact that 
the body may be mutilated, a limb buried 
here and an arm there and the remain- 
der elsewhere, does not diminish the 
power of omnipotence. If the physical 
being were torn into fragments and some 
parts cast on the blistering sands of the 
sultry desert, others bound by the icy 
fetters of the frigid zone, and still others 
buried in the ' dark unfathomed caves of 
ocean,' while some portions may have 
crossed into the realms of the vegetable 
world and appear in the form of the 
nodding violet or waving grass, yet He 



Resurrection of the Body 149 

who occupies all space, and writes His 
law within the tiny walls of the smallest 
atom, could change these scattered par- 
ticles into a glorified body in the twink- 
ling of an eye." 

Whatever we may think of this 
author's idea of the resurrection day, he 
is correct in saying that the acceptance 
of all these details involves less credulity 
than believing in design without a De- 
signer. All these quoted statements are 
by persons who have thought the case 
through, have weighed objections, and 
have reached conclusions. Doubtless 
their conclusions are grotesque, but they 
deserve more respect than is due to the 
superficial and supercilious criticism 
sometimes heaped upon them. But in 
their exuberance of detail they are in 
contrast with the greatest Christian 
hymns, and still more with the reticence 
of the New Testament. And it is not 
correct to say without qualification that 
they represent the view which the church 



150 The Future Life 

of the past has taken of the doctrine of 
the resurrection. Some persons have 
taken this view, and some still take it, 
while others, from Paul till now, have 
taken a view very different. 

The Terms that denote Resurrection 

In the New Testament the terms de- 
noting the resurrection are employed in 
three different ways. First, they may 
denote the general fact of the transform- 
ing of dead persons into living. Second, 
they may denote a certain great cosmical 
crisis, the crisis when the trumpet shall 
sound and the dead shall be raised. 
Third, they may denote the permanent 
condition of those who have experienced 
resurrection. The consideration of the 
second of these uses belongs to the next 
chapter ; that of the first and third is now 
before us. 

The word most commonly used in the 
New Testament for rising from the dead 
is the verb egeiro, to awaken. The angel 



Resurrection of the Body 151 

awakened Peter, and the disciples awak- 
ened Jesus (Acts xii. 7 ; Mark iv. 38). 
Joseph awakened from his dream, and 
took Jesus to Egypt, and back to the 
land of Israel (Matt ii. 13, 14, 20, 21). 
Here and often elsewhere the English 
versions have the verb "arise," but the 
arising is only a suggested meaning. 
Probably the word could be uniformly 
translated "awaken," and in many in- 
stances with the effect of rendering the 
sense more vivid. Read through the 
fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians, sub- 
stituting "awaken" for "be raised." 
Note especially the places where it 
comes into antithesis with " asleep' ' (e. g. 
verses 18, 20). You will perhaps not 
wish to change the familiar old render- 
ing, but you will find it imbued with 
new significance. The noun of this stem 
is used but once in the New Testament 
(Matt, xxvii. 53). 

It is said that the use of egeiro in the 
sense of raising the dead is unknown in 



152 The Future Life 

classic Greek (Cremer, p. 306). It is a 
distinctly Semitic contribution. It is in 
keeping with the Old Testament concep- 
tion of death as a person's sleeping with 
his ancestors. Gehazi, after laying the 
staff on the face of the dead boy, made 
his report that the child was " not 
awaked " (II Ki. iv. 31). Jesus expresses 
the same idea in a different word when 
He proposes to wake Lazarus from his 
sleep (John xi. 11). 

Nearly as frequent as egeiro, and on the 
whole more conspicuous, are the verb 
anistemi and its noun anastasis. The 
noun is translated " resurrection/ ' The 
verb denotes to rise up or raise one up 
from the supineness of death to the vigor 
of life. Peter turned to the body of 
Tabitha and said, "Rise up." She 
opened her eyes, saw Peter, sat up, " and 
he gave her his hand, and raised her up." 
Jesus commanded the ruler's daughter 
to awaken, " and straightway the damsel 
rose up" (Acts ix. 40, 41 ; Mark v. 41, 42). 



Resurrection of the Body 153 

The words of these two stems are 
sometimes used interchangeably, and in 
variant readings one is often displaced by 
the other. Resurrection of the dead is 
frequently mentioned, but resurrection 
from the dead still more frequently. In 
the first of these expressions dead persons 
are represented as rising to life, in the 
second one is represented as passing out 
of the class of dead persons into another 
class. Perhaps we have here nothing 
more than two differing aspects of the 
same fact. 

The words of these stems are not used 
to denote a person's being raised from the 
grave, or from the world of the dead. 
Jesus says that " all that are in the tombs 
shall hear His voice, and shall come 
forth," some c< unto a resurrection of 
life," and some " unto a resurrection of 
judgment " (John v. 28, 29). Here we 
have not a resurrection from the tombs, 
but a coming forth from the tombs into 
a resurrection (not " the resurrection," as 



154 The Future Life 

in the versions). Similarly we are told 
that Jesus "called Lazarus out of the 
tomb, and awakened him from the dead" 
(John xii. 17). At the crucifixion "the 
tombs were opened, and many bodies of 
the saints that slept were awakened, and, 
coming forth from the tombs after the 
awakening/' were seen by many (Matt. 
xxvii. 52, 53). The revised versions 
make " the awakening'' in this case to be 
Christ's resurrection ; however this may 
be, the resurrection terms here denote 
something different from the coming 
forth from the tombs. In Revelation 
(xx. 13) we have a representation of the 
sea and death and hades giving up the 
dead that are in them, but this is not 
called resurrection. 

We are accustomed to sing : 

" From the dark grave He rose, 
The mansions of the dead " ; 

and our hymns and other religious utter- 
ances are saturated with this conception of 



Resurrection of the Body 155 

the resurrection of Christ or of believers 
as a rising out of the grave or out of the 
world of the dead. This circumstance 
gives importance to the distinction that 
has just been presented. Whether the 
conception is correct or not, at all events 
it is not scriptural ; and it has a tendency 
to distract our minds from the scriptural 
form of the idea of resurrection. What- 
ever exceptional or unusual forms of ex- 
pression there may be in the recorded 
teachings of Jesus and His immediate fol- 
lowers, the ordinary presentation is not 
that of buried bodies rising up from their 
graves, or from Hades, but that of a 
person awakening from unconsciousness, 
rising up from the powerlessness of death 
to the activity of life. 

"Resurrection and the Body 

In our sixth chapter we have noticed 
the correctness of the instinct which 
leads men to speak of the salvation of 



156 The Future Life 

"the soul." The same instinct asserts 
itself when we speak of the immortality 
of the soul, but of the resurrection of the 
body. What is the human body ? 

Differentially, it is the complement of 
organs through which an individual hu- 
man spirit works. Whether it is nec- 
essarily made of matter is another ques- 
tion. In certain conditions, we would 
speak of the body of a shadow or of 
a reflection. The Bible says little of 
disembodied human spirits as such. It 
represents the human person in the life 
after death as a soul, a self, a spirit with 
whatever organism is requisite for main- 
taining personal identity. It never 
speaks of the resurrection of " the 
flesh " or of the materials of which our 
present bodies are composed, but it 
emphasizes the resurrection of the body. 
" If the Spirit of Him that awakened 
Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He 
that awakened Christ Jesus from the 
dead shall quicken also your mortal 



Resurrection of the Body 157 

bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth 
in you" (Rom. viii. 11). Notice here that 
our resurrection bodies are to be our 
mortal bodies made alive. That this mak- 
ing alive implies transformation is much 
insisted upon. We wait for the Lord 
Jesus Christ from heaven, "Who shall 
fashion anew the body of our humiliation, 
that it may be conformed to the body 
of His glory "(Phil. iii. 21). 

As we shall see in the next chapter, 
Jesus and the others at first taught this 
doctrine, to Jews, mainly in terms derived 
from the Old Testament and the scribes. 
When it came to be preached to the 
Greeks, with their non-Semitic habits of 
thought, difficulties arose. To meet 
these difficulties was one principal purpose 
of Paul's letters to the Thessalonians, per- 
haps the earliest of the New Testament 
writings. The difficulties persisted, and 
are more formally discussed in Paul's later 
writings, especially in the familiar fif- 
teenth chapter of I Corinthians. 



158 The Future Life 

Nature of the Resurrection Body 

First, it is identical with the mortal 
body of the same person, in the sense of 
its being body to the same spirit, and con- 
stituting with that spirit the same soul, 
the same self. Jesus, speaking on an- 
other subject, stated an implication 
which Paul recognized and expanded. 
When a grain of wheat dies in the earth, 
it has a resurrection in the " much fruit' ' 
which springs from it (John xii. 24).* 
Paul calls attention (I Cor. xv. 36-41) to 
the identity of the blade with the kernel 
that was sown : " to each seed a body of 
its own." The kernel and the blade are 
alike the body to the differential principle 
of the kernel. The product is still 
wheat, not something else ; still that in- 
dividual type of wheat, not some other. 

* It is no valid objection to say that the Gospel of John was 
not written till after Paul's epistles, for Paul was not dependent 
on our written Gospels for his knowledge concerning Jesus. 
Doubtless he learned from Jesus how to deal with the Greek 
mind. 



Resurrection of the Body 159 

In this sense it is the same body, not a 
similar body but the same, no matter 
how different it may be in shape or color 
or qualities or constituent particles. And 
Paul intimates that it is in many aspects a 
different body — " not the body that shall 
be," " but God giveth it a body/' No- 
tice how absolutely this teaching identi- 
fies the resurrection body with our pres- 
ent bodies ; and how utterly in contrast 
it is with all attempts to identify them by 
the materials of which they are com- 
posed. 

Second, various terms are used to in- 
dicate the differences between the pres- 
ent body of a person and his resurrection 
body. One is earthy and the other 
heavenly, one psychical and the other 
spiritual, one corruptible and the other 
incorruptible (I Cor. xv. 42-54). Jesus 
had taught that in the resurrection men 
die no more, but are like the angels 
(Luke xx. 36 and parallels), and Paul 
expands the teaching into this doctrine 



160 The Future Life 

of a heavenly, spiritual, incorruptible 
body. This might be illustrated by all 
the numerous passages which speak of 
the changing of our mortal bodies (e. g. 
I Cor. xv. 51, 52; II Cor. v. 2, 4; Phil, 
iii. 21 ; Rom. viii. 11). 

Third, emphasis is particularly placed 
on the idea that the resurrection body is 
not subject to the perpetual flux which 
we think of as characterizing matter. 
That it is incorruptible is many times 
reiterated. Christian teaching, except 
in figure of speech, does not mention 
the nourishing of the resurrection bodies 
of the redeemed by eating and drinking. 
Jesus expressly says that there is no mar- 
rying in the resurrection. Note the con- 
trast with the teachings of Mohammed 
and others. And as if other expressions 
were not explicit enough, Paul expressly 
tells us that " flesh and blood cannot in- 
herit the kingdom of God" (I Cor. xv. 
50), that is, that the resurrection body is 
not a body of flesh and blood. 



Resurrection of the Body 161 

Does Jesus teach that the resurrection 
body is made up of atoms of matter ? I 
do not know. The witnesses do not 
say, and I do not know what atoms of 
matter are. Does He teach that the res- 
urrection body contains some of the 
same particles which the mortal body of 
the same person contained? I do not 
know. The witnesses do not say. What 
I do know is that He teaches that the 
two bodies are identical in point of per- 
sonal individuality, and the new body is 
made of other stuff than disintegrating, 
corruptible matter. This doctrine of 
the resurrection of the body is positive, 
replete with reality, and free from the 
difficulties attending such presentations 
as are quoted in the beginning of this 
chapter. 

The Bodies of Lazarus and of Jesus 

The bodies of Lazarus and of others 
who were raised from the dead by mir- 
acle should not be cited in proof of the 



1 62 The Future Life 

nature of the resurrection body. Their 
reanimated bodies were corruptible, and 
in due time died again. But how was it 
with the body of our risen Lord during 
those last forty days ? That body of flesh 
and bones, that body which ate and 
drank? No one should dismiss the 
question lightly. There is nothing on 
which the New Testament more insists 
than on the reality of the resurrection 
experiences of Jesus, and the indissol- 
uble connection between His resurrec- 
tion and ours. The great thing in the 
doctrine of the resurrection is the per- 
sonal relation of Christ to it. Never- 
theless a wise person will be cautious in 
drawing inferences as to our resurrection 
body from what we are told concerning 
the body of the risen Jesus. 

" In the Resurrection " 

In the passage between Jesus and the 
Sadducees the word resurrection is used 
by both to denote the permanent condi- 



Resurrection of the Body 163 

tions that follow an experience of resur- 
rection, or that follow the general crisis 
known as the resurrection. " In the res- 
urrection therefore whose wife shall she 
be ? " "In the resurrection they neither 
marry nor " etc. (Matt. xxii. 28, 30 and 
parallels). This use is not infrequent (e. g. 
perhaps Luke xiv. 14, xx. 36 ; Phil. iii. 
11). So far as the future is concerned, 
the resurrection life is the gonial life, and, 
like that, is the gift of God. The effecting 
of a resurrection is by divine prerogative. 
This is affirmed concerning the resurrec- 
tion of Christ (e. g. Acts ii. 24, 32, x. 40, 
xiii. 34, xvii. 31), and concerning that of 
believers (e. g. I Cor. vi. 14 ; John v. 21). 
Both in the case of resurrection and of 
aeonial life, Jesus claims to exercise the 
same prerogative (e. g. John v. 19-29, xi. 
22-25), that of the giving of life. 



CHAPTER XI 

The Judgment Day 

d VERY large part of what the 
yjf New Testament writers have to 
say concerning the future life is 
devoted to the resurrection regarded as a 
cosmical crisis, the end of the world, the 
consummation of the age, the close of 
the dispensation, the accomplishing of all 
things, the case of those who endure to 
the end and shall be saved, the coming 
of the Lord to judgment [e. g. Matt. v. 18, 
x. 22, xiii. 49, xxiv. 13 and numerous 
other places). We shall the better un- 
derstand these representations if we be- 
gin by noting that the judgment ima- 
164 



The Judgment Day 165 

gery is mainly from the Old Testament ; 
that the ideas of its finality and its con- 
nection with the resurrection of the 
dead are largely the contribution of the 
scribes ; while the distinctively Christian 
element is the personal presence of Christ 
in the judgment scenes, and their being 
dominated by His temper and principles. 
Of course the earlier truths which Jesus 
incorporated into His teaching have His 
sanction equally with those which He 
added to the old ; but we shall understand 
Him better if we distinguish between 
the two. 

The Old Testament Judgment Imagery 

In an immense number of places the 
writers of the Old Testament speak of 
Jehovah as the universal king and judge 
of nations and of men. In not a few 
places we find the picture of His holding 
an assembly for judgment, arousing Him- 
self for that purpose, coming to the place 
of judgment attended by a retinue, re- 



1 66 The Future Life 

turning on high. It is in His capacity as 
judge of peoples that individuals appeal 
to Him to redress their wrongs (e. g. Joel 
iii. 12, 16 ; Pss. i. 5, vii. 6-8, ix and x, 
especially ix. 7, 8, 15, 16, 1, especially 
3, 6). The conception is not that of a 
universal judgment-court held once for 
all, but rather that of a court held for the 
trial of the case that arises. 

In a succession of utterances of differ- 
ent centuries the prophets use the phrase 
"the day of Jehovah" to denote a judg- 
ment crisis of this sort. The book of 
Joel, for example, is a monograph on 
"The Day of Jehovah." Read it 
through with this in mind, and on the 
verses that mention the day of Jehovah 
read the reference passages in Obadiah, 
Amos, Isaiah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, 
Malachi. Each prophet speaks of the 
day as near at hand, impending. A 
prophet proclaims it as impending in his 
own time, and does not think of this as 
in conflict with its having been impend- 



The Judgment Day 167 

ing in the times of earlier prophets, in 
different earlier centuries. It is the one 
impending day of Jehovah, and yet there 
is something generic in its character. 

In these passages concerning a judg- 
ment crisis or concerning the day of 
Jehovah cosmical convulsions are pict- 
ured, heaven and earth quaking, the sun 
and moon and stars darkening, and the 
like (e. g. Joel iii. 15, 16 and parallels). 
In some cases these are wholly or in part 
figures of speech for political struggles 
or revolutions. 

Who does not see that this imagery is 
reproduced, of course with variations, in 
those passages of the Gospels and Epistles 
which speak of "the day of the Lord/' 
"the day when the Son of man cometh" 
— in the pictures we have of Christ com- 
ing in the clouds of heaven, attended by 
angels, with power and great glory, to 
" render to every man according to his 
deeds/' with signs from heaven, and 
earthquakes, and political convulsions, 



1 68 The Future Life 

"men fainting for fear and for expectation 
of the things which are coming on the 
inhabited earth"? (Matt. xvi. 27, xxiv, 
especially 6-8, 27-31 ; Mark viii. 38, xiii. 
7, 8, 24-27 ; Luke ix. 26, xxi. 9-11, 25-28 
and parallel places). Not the least 
marked feature in the reproduction is 
the representation that the events in 
question are impending over that genera- 
tion, and yet also belong to an unknown 
future date (Matt. xvi. 28, xxiv. 36 ; 
Mark ix. 1, xiii. 32 ; Luke ix. 27). In 
view of the history of the phrases used, 
one should not feel too sure that Jesus 
and Paul were expecting something that 
failed to occur. 

Judgment and Resurrection 

If Daniel xii. 1-3 is to be counted 
one of the Old Testament judgment pas- 
sages, then the picturing of the resurrec- 
tion of the dead in connection with the 
judgment scene begins in the Old Testa- 
ment. Apparently this was a common 



The Judgment Day i6g 

practice with the scribes in the time of 
Jesus. When Martha said, " I know 
that he shall rise again in the resurrec- 
tion at the last day" (John xi. 24), it is 
most natural to think that she was utter- 
ing a commonplace, believed alike by 
Jesus and herself and her countrymen. 
When Jesus says of the believer that He 
"will raise him up at the last day" (John 
vi. 40, 44), He seems to be address- 
ing Himself to preconceived opinions. 
Similar instances are numerous. His 
auditors may have had the idea of " the 
judgment/' "the day of Jehovah," as a 
crisis that might be repeated whenever 
there was occasion for it ; but they also 
had the idea of "the judgment," "the 
day of Jehovah " that was peculiarly and 
exclusively such, "the last day," and 
with this they were in the habit of 
coupling the thought of the resurrection. 
Assuming that Jesus addressed Him- 
self to His hearers on the basis of the 
mental equipment they already had, this 



170 The Future Life 

equipment included prominently the 
conception of the day of judgment that 
was such par excellence. They thought 
of it as the time of the announcing of 
reward and punishment. He was ap- 
pealing to ideas which they held in com- 
mon with Him when He spoke of the 
wheat and the tares in the harvest which 
is " the end of the aeon," when He said 
that men "in the day of judgment" shall 
give account of every idle word, and 
that it would then be less tolerable for 
some than for Sodom and Gomorrah 
(Matt. xiii. 39n\, xii. 36, x. 15, xi. 22, 
24). He and His first disciples were not 
uttering things that were entirely strange 
and unfamiliar when they spoke of the 
pageantry of the occasion, the judge 
coming in clouds with his retinue of 
angels, the sounding of the trumpet, the 
gathering of all the nations, the separa- 
tion to life and to punishment, some sit- 
ting on twelve thrones judging the 
twelve tribes (Matt. xxv. 31ff., xix. 28). 



The Judgment Day 171 

Christ the Judge 
When Jesus and His disciples thus 
took over the teachings of the Old Test- 
ament and the scribes they doubtless 
changed many details ; but the great 
characteristic change which they made 
consisted in their proclaiming that Jesus 
Christ is Himself the supreme judge at 
the last day, and that all its proceedings 
are marked by the ethical qualities 
which characterize Him. He it is, ac- 
cording to the passages last quoted, who 
is to come in the clouds with the angels, 
to sit on the throne of His glory, before 
whom the nations are to be gathered, 
and who will pronounce the sentence. 
It is He that will reject many who say, 
" Lord, Lord " ; He to whom the Fa- 
ther "hath given all judgment;" and He 
whose voice the dead shall hear (Matt. 
vii. 22 ; John v. 22, 25). It is He that 
shall descend from heaven when "the 
dead in Christ shall rise first,' ' and He 
whom those who are caught up shall 



172 The Future Life 

meet in the air (I Thess iv. 16, 17). 
Paul " preached Jesus and the resurrec- 
tion/ ' and that God has appointed a day 
for judging the inhabited earth by the 
Man whom He raised up from the dead 
(Acts xvii. 18, 31). 

What does this Teaching mean ? 

If we were at liberty to repudiate those 
parts of the doctrine of the judgment- 
resurrection which seem to have origi- 
nated with the scribes, that would afford 
a cheap solution of certain great difficul- 
ties. The Old Testament doctrine of a 
recurring "day of Jehovah" is simple. 
From the Christian point of view no 
great difficulty enters through the af- 
firming that Jesus Christ is the Lord of 
the judgment. But this doctrine of one 
particular future time for the judgment 
and the resurrection of the dead is a 
puzzling doctrine. 

It comes into troublesome relations 
with our conceptions of space, and 



The Judgment Day 173 

our knowledge that the earth is round. 
The picture of the Judge coming in the 
clouds is facile enough as long as you 
confine it to a limited horizon, but how 
can you make it when you extend the 
horizon so as to include the whole earth ? 
You cannot solve this by saying that 
God has infinite power. It is not a 
question of power ; it is whether we can 
possibly think an unthinkable thought, 
and whether that which is unthinkable 
can be real. 

A like difficulty emerges in terms of 
time. In the earlier chapters of this 
book we have seen how thoroughly the 
teaching of Jesus emphasizes the idea of 
the continuity of the present with the 
future. How can this be reconciled 
with the idea of one great judgment 
time for all, far in the future? Have 
we here a break in the continuity, a 
break extending over the time interven- 
ing between any person's death and the 
judgment day? .How about these two 



174 The Future Life 

conceptions, one of which presents the 
matter in terms of natural law, while the 
other presents it in terms that seem to 
transcend and contradict natural law ? 

The creeds and theologies have an- 
swered this question by presenting in 
various items a doctrine of the inter- 
mediate state. To persons of modern 
habits of thought these items are likely 
to seem mechanical and unreal. In our 
generation many even of those who be- 
lieve in immortality cut out all ideas of a 
resurrection day and a final judgment, 
saying that there is no other resurrection 
than the fact that a person continues to 
live after the death of the material body. 
Such come under the rebuke which 
Paul administers to certain men who 
"have missed the mark, saying that the 
resurrection is passed already " (II Tim. 
ii. 18). In view of the immense num- 
ber of utterances in which Jesus and the 
earliest Christians reiterate this teaching 
as to the judgment-resurrection crisis, 



The Judgment Day 175 

and of the circumstantiality of those 
utterances, it is impossible to deal fairly 
with the difficulties by merely ignoring 
them, or by cheap explanations. 

A more reasonable way is that already 
indicated in our eighth chapter. The 
statements made concerning the judg- 
ment-resurrection pageant are like other 
physical expressions for infinite realities. 
There is in them an element of figure of 
speech, but they stand for something that 
is tremendously real. The reality is 
there, whether we can successfully dis- 
sect it from the imagery or not. 

" Watch, therefore, for ye know not" 

The thing that Jesus makes perfectly 
intelligible in all this teaching concerning 
the judgment is the practical bearing of 
it. Because the day and hour are com- 
ing, and coming unexpectedly, we are 
never to relax our vigilance. This is re- 
peated over and over, with endless variety 
of phraseology. The coming of the Son 



176 The Future Life 

of man will be as a thief in the night, as 
lightning that in an instant fills the whole 
sky. There will be no notification be- 
forehand, and therefore we may never 
be off our guard. The supreme instant 
may arrive when we are working in the 
field, grinding at the mill, resting on the 
housetop, and we must therefore be 
always ready. 

In this as in many other matters the 
instinctive perceptions of Christian people 
have been more intelligent than their 
formal exegesis. What is the practical 
effect of the belief in the judgment day, 
as it works itself out in the experience 
of a devout person ? It is to bring all 
his conduct into relations with that final 
scene. One has an opportunity, and 
either uses or fails to use it; at that 
moment his relations to that opportunity 
are forever decided ; the decision that 
will be announced at the judgment day 
has already been reached. One closes 
his life leaving certain duties done and 



The Judgment Day 177 

others undone ; that decides the char- 
acter of his lifework, and the decision is 
the one which will stand at the last day. 
What the recording angel writes con- 
cerning us is decisions, and not informa- 
tion only. When the books are opened 
the final decision will consist of the in- 
numerable decisions that have been re- 
corded day by day. The thought of this 
has wholesomely affected believers, ren- 
dering them careful of their daily acts, 
and this is the effect that Jesus designed 
it should have. 

In this we have a glimpse at one as- 
pect of a great reality. The thousands of 
millions of the men of the successive 
generations have their millions of millions 
of crises in life, important or relatively 
unimportant, and in each crisis it is God 
the judge who makes the decision. Sup- 
pose we combine in our thought these 
millions of millions of items, thinking of 
them as one aggregate. Shall we not 
have a conception of a universal judg- 



178 The Future Life 

ment, such that we might clothe it with 
the imagery used in the New Testa- 
ment ? And will not our conception be 
that of a great reality in which each one 
of us is concerned ? 

Of course this is not offered as supersed- 
ing any other contents which there may 
be in our Saviour's teaching. Doubtless 
it is only one aspect of a many-sided real- 
ity. Christians have commonly regarded 
this teaching as including an outline of 
the future history of mankind and the 
earth. Millennial theology of every type 
is based upon it. There are large fields of 
thought here which we cannot now enter. 
The church is not going to drop its use 
of the judgment-resurrection phraseolgy, 
nor the idea that there will be outward 
events in realization of it. But nothing 
in the great crisis is more important than 
this, that the daily crises of our lives be 
adjusted to it. For many purposes our 
Saviour's final word is : " What I say 
unto you I say unto all, Watch." 



CHAPTER XII 

Cross Examination 

/N eleven chapters we have made a 
brief survey of the teaching of Jesus 
concerning the future life, as this 
is set down in the records. Two addi- 
tional questions arise. First, are the 
records to be depended upon ? Did He 
actually teach what they say He taught ? 
Second, is this teaching true ? These 
questions must here be dismissed with a 
few words. Perhaps only a few are 
needed. 

Some one will doubtless say that the 
treatment in this book has been merely 
popular, and not scientific, with the sug- 

179 



180 The Future Life 

gestion that a truly scientific treatment 
might bring to light something very 
different as constituting the actual teach- 
ings of Jesus on the subject in hand. Of 
course the treatment has not been for- 
mally scientific, but whether that affects 
the results reached is another question. 
We have come across the meadows in- 
stead of marching the long way around, 
but the place where we have arrived may 
be the same, for all that. 

No one is so extreme an agnostic as to 
doubt that Jesus taught something ex- 
ceedingly pronounced concerning a fu- 
ture life. So much is evident from the 
whole history of the church of the first 
centuries. If there were nothing else, 
the ambition of the early Christians for 
martyrdom indicates how prominent was 
the idea of the future life among the 
traditions which they inherited from 
their Founder. This and other phe- 
nomena must needs be accounted for by 
something in the teachings of Jesus. 



Cross Examination 181 

In trying to account for it we might 
have begun by following some recent 
critical theory, laying aside everything 
except the minimum residuum of the 
Gospels which our theory regards as act- 
ually uttered by Jesus, and giving to this 
the interpretation that seemed to us the 
most plausible. If we had done this, 
and stopped with this, our alleged scien- 
tific results would have been worthless. 
We should still be under obligation to 
correct and supplement our conclusions 
by comparing them with the impressions 
which the teaching of Jesus made on 
His contemporaries and His immediate 
successors. We should have to take 
these group by group, and when we had 
been through them all, we should sim- 
ply have done more thoroughly and ex- 
haustively the work which in this vol- 
ume we have actually done. Of course 
the author has done some travel on this 
longer road, though he could not ask his 
readers to take the toilsome tramp with 



1 82 The Future Life 

him. The longer process would simply 
confirm the conclusion already reached, 
to the effect that the narrators of the 
words of Jesus unite with His contem- 
poraries and first successors in an agree- 
ing testimony as to what He taught con- 
cerning a future life. There is nothing 
unbelievable in the proposition that He 
taught what they say He taught. If He 
taught just this, His teaching accounts 
for the part that the belief in the fu- 
ture life played in the experience of the 
martyrs and confessors and other early 
Christians. 

In view of the stress I have laid on 
the spiritual factors in future reward and 
punishment, some one may charge me 
with explaining away or softening down 
the words of Jesus. But I have not ex- 
plained away anything. I have simply 
called attention to certain parts of His 
meaning. If you think this inadequate, 
the terms which He used still remain 
for your more adequate interpretation. 



Cross Examination 183 

And I have not softened down anything. 
Does it seem to you that mental anguish 
and regret are trifles? If you think of 
Nero as now conscious, how do you 
suppose he enjoys the thought of his life 
career, and the reputation he bears? 
Do you think that universal execration 
is just slightly disagreeable? How 
would you like to be thought of, the 
coming two thousand years, as we all 
think of Nero ? A certain woman who 
lived several generations ago is currently 
cited for illustration as the mother of 
criminals. Figures are given as to how 
many murderers have descended from 
her, how many thieves, how many har- 
lots, how many lunatics. If you think of 
her as now living, how, provided divine 
grace has not intervened, does she feel 
concerning her course on earth ? How 
would you like to look forward to such 
a future reward as hers? And if you 
think of Nero or that woman as so 
hardened that they do not suffer from 



184 The Future Life 

regret, does that diminish your repug- 
nance ? Does it give you a desire to be 
like Nero, or like that woman ? 

Do not make the blunder of thinking 
that mental and moral suffering belong 
to our refined civilization, to the exclu- 
sion of men who lived in earlier times. 
In our teachings on future retribution 
the physical symbols still have their use. 
There are many who are stirred by 
them who would not be stirred with- 
out them. Supposably they may have 
been more needed for men in earlier 
stages of civilization, but from the ear- 
liest recorded times men have been ca- 
pable of understanding the bitterness of 
degradation and disgrace and poignant 
regret. 

As with the retributions of the future, 
so with its rewards. If we insist upon 
those which are spiritual in their nature, 
that excludes no other rewards which 
one can find warrant for in the teaching 
of the Master. We do not know the 



Cross Examination 185 

whole, and we need not be troubled at 
our deficient knowledge. If we are 
"children of God," and "know that if 
He shall be manifested we shall be like 
Him," we need not worry that " it is not 
yet made manifest what we shall be." 

Can we be sure that this teaching of 
Jesus is the truth ? The past ten years 
have witnessed the publishing of a multi- 
tude of books and articles on immortality, 
many of them by authors who do not ac- 
cept the testimony of the Scriptures or 
of Jesus as a sufficient ground of belief. 
With much uniformity they reach the 
conclusion that the argument for im- 
mortality results in what is "at worst 
a drawn battle," that life beyond the 
grave is at least as probable as its opposite. 
For one who has nothing more than this 
the outlook is dim, though not utterly 
hopeless. But if one adds to this a con- 
viction that Jesus had wonderful insight, 
that He had knowledge of man's destiny 
reaching beyond that of other men, and 



1 86 The Future Life 

that the things which He confidently 
taught were the things that He really 
knew; then one may take comfort in 
the fact that scientists and philosophers 
know of no sufficient reason for not 
accepting His doctrine of the future life. 
And there are yet higher grounds of 
certitude for us who receive Jesus as the 
supreme revelation of God to men. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Abaddon, 23, 30. See Sheol. 
Acts and Epistles as source, 2. 
Adopted teachings of Jesus, 52. 
JEon in the New Testament, 37, I29ff. 
Gonial destruction, 79. 
yEonial duration, 126. 
Gonial fire, 78, 79, 115. 
Gonial house, 79. 
iEonial life, 756*:, 79, 142, 

as a gift, 8 iff. 

continuing after death, 77. 

in heaven, 112. 

in the present, 76. 

life in what sense, 85. 
iEonial punishment, 79. 
iEonial tabernacles, 79. 
Age, age-lasting, etc., 13 iff. 
Age, Consummation of, 62. 
Age, The Messianic, 131. 
Analogies to personal immortality, 133. 
Angels, good and evil, 113. 
Anislemi and anastasis, 152. 
Annihilationist view, 142. 
Arnold, Matthew, 17. 



B 

Babylonian doctrine of immortality, 7. 
Balder and Hermod, 16, 24. 



187 



1 88 Index of Subjects 



Before Jesus : Ethnical ideas, 7ff. 

Israelitish ideas, 22ff. 
Body, Resurrection of. See Resurrection. 
The body of Jesus, 162. 
The body of Lazarus, 161. 
The body, what it is, I55ff. 



Cerberus, 24. 

Character and heaven, 103. 

Childlike beliefs, 18. 

Choir invisible, 136. 

Christ the judge, 170, 171. 

Columbian Orator on the resurrection, 147. 

Common ground in using the sources, 5. 

Conditional immortality, 142. 

Conscious individual existence, 88. 

Contrast between Jesus and His predecessors, 52. 

Covenant, never ending, 46. 

Covenant with Sheol, 28. 

Cross-examination, I79ff. 

Current terms as used by Jesus, 48. 

D 

Dante's Inferno, 16. 

Day of Jehovah, 166. 

Day of the Lord, 51, 1451!, i64ff. 

Dickinson's Greek View of Life, 18. 

Divine Legation of Moses, 40. 

Dying thief, 64. 



Egeiro as denoting resurrection, i5off. 

Egyptian Book of the Dead, 8, 41. 

Egyptian doctrine of immortality, 7. 

Elysium and Tartarus, 16, 25. 

End of the world, 63. 

Enoch and Elijah, 35,45. 

Epistles as sources, The, 2. 

Eternal life, 73ff. 

Eternity, I25ff. See Olam, s&on, Gonial. 



Index of Subjects 189 



Eternity as understood by the prophets, 1 26. 
Eternity as understood by the scribes, 127. 
Ethnical ideas before Jesus, 7. 
Explaining away hard teachings, i82ff. 

F 
Failure as punishment, 121. 
Faith as an experience of the future life, 94. 
Fenelon's Telemaque, 16. 

G 
Gehenna, 37, 62, 79. 
Generalities as to heaven, 87ff. 
Gnashing of teeth, 50, 62, 1 18. 
Greek world of the dead, 1 2. 

H 

Hades, the word as used by Jesus, 48. 

Hades. See Sheol, World of the dead. 

Heaven and character, 103. 

Heaven as spoken of by Jesus, noff. 

Heaven, where and what is it? m. 

Hell. See Sheol, Hades, World of the dead, Punishment. 

Hinnom, The valley of, 51. 

Homer's world of the dead, 15, 17. 

Hope as an experience of the future life, 99. 



Image of God, as implying immortality, 45. 

Immortality in the Old Testament, 32ff. 

Immortality of influence, 134. 

Immortality of reputation, 134. 

Immortality, Theories of, 138. 

Inaction in the world of the dead, 25ft. 

Intermediate state, 174. 

Interpretation by Jesus of earlier teachings, 38ff. 

Ishtar and the world of the dead, 14. 

Israelitish teachings before Jesus, 22ff, 38ff, 169. 

Ixion, 24. 

J 
Jewish participation in ethnical ideas, 20. 
Josephus concerning Hades, 16. 



190 Index of Subjects 



Judgment, 51. 

Judgment and resurrection, 168. 

Judgment crisis, The, in one sense perpetual, 177. 

Judgment day, i64ff. 

Judgment day, difficulties, 173. 

Judgment doctrine, practical effects, 176. 

Judgment imagery in the Old Testament, 165. 

Judgment scene, how interpreted, 172. 

K 

Kingdom as related to the future life, 51, 56ff. 
Kingdom, unending, promised to David and Israel, 59. 
Knowledge as an experience of the future life, 9 iff. 



Life, aeonial. See Gonial life. 

Life from Sheol, 32ff. 

Life, Three New Testament words for, 74. 

Literal facts of the future life, 9off. 

Love as an experience of the future life, 100. 

M 

Martyrdom, Ambition of the early Christians for, 180. 
Milton's underworld, 16. 
Minos and Rhadamanthus, 24. 
Moses and Immortality, 4 iff. 

N 

Natural endless recompenses, 137. 
Negative facts concerning a future life, 86. 
New birth and the kingdom, 59. 
New Jerusalem imagery, 107. 
Norse underworld, 16. 

O 

Olam, 37, 1 26, etc. 
Olam in the plural, 127. 
Orpheus and Eurydice, 15. 
Outer darkness, 50, 61. 



Index of Subjects 191 

p 

Persephone, 15. 

Person of Jesus connected with immortality, 55, 

Pharisees, their doctrine of the future, 36. 

Phillips, Stephen, his Ulysses, 17. 

Physical expressions for future life, io6ff. 

Pit, as equivalent of Sheol, 23, 48. 

Pluto, 24. 

Pollock's Course of Time, 16. 

Primitive beliefs, 18. 

Probation, 140. 

Promise and the future life, The, 35, 51. 

Punishment, Future abodes of, 79. 

Future world of, 114. 

Nature of, n8ff. 

Physical representations of, 115. 



Realities in future punishment, H5ff, 183. 
Realities in the future life, 84ff . 
Realities that are beyond expression, 109. 
Remorse as punishment, i2off, 184. 
Repentance, change of mind, 72. 
Rephaim, 23, 26, 30. See Shades. 
Restorationist view, 142. 
Resurrection and judgment, 168. 
Resurrection as an epoch, The, i62ff. 
Resurrection body, its nature, I58ff. 
Resurrection of the body, 145. 

Materialistic views of, I46ff. 

not from the world of the dead, 153. 

not past already, 174. 

Pauline doctrine, 150. 

terms denoting it, i5off. 
Reticence of the Scriptures, 24, 149. 
Retributive memory, iigff. 
Retributive sequences, 1 igff, 183. 
Reward, Future abodes of, 79. 
Rich man and Lazarus, 49, 53. 



192 Index of Subjects 



Sadducees, 36, 39. 

Salvation and the future life, 5 iff, 66ff. 

Sanction by Jesus of the teachings He adopts, 52. 

Save, saved, Saviour, 7off. 

Scientific method, 181. 

Scribes, their doctrine of a future life, 36ff. 

Seneca, 43. 

Sepulture and the world of the dead, 19, 25, 31. 

Shades, 23, 53. See Rephaim. 

Sheol, 22ff, 48. See Hades, World of the dead. 

Sherwood, Margaret, Persephone, 17. 

Sisyphus, 24. 

Sleeping with one's fathers, 35. 

Social nature of the future life, 89. 

Soul, Salvation of, 66, 155. 

Meaning of the term, 68. 

versus spirit, 67. 
Sources of information, 1. 



Tantalus, 24. 

Tartarus and Elysium, 16, 24. 

Theories of immortality, 138. 

Time- world and space-world, 129. 

Trustworthiness of the sources, 3, 185. 

Truth of the teachings of Jesus, 185. 



U 



Ulysses in the underworld, 15, 17, 24. 
Underworld. See Hades, Sheol, World of the 

Milton's, 16. 

Norse, 16. 



Index of Subjects 193 



v 

Virgil's world of the dead, 15, 17. 

W 

Warburton, 40. 
"Watch, therefore," 175. 
World, kosmos, 78. 

aion, see iEon, Age. 
World of the dead, ioff, 22, 25ft. See Sheol, Hades. 

Y 
Young, his description of the resurrection, 146. 



INDEX OF TEXTS 



Genesis xxxvii. 35 




25 


Psalm 


cxix. 52 


127 


xlii. 38 




25 


cxxxix. 8 


26 


xliv. 29, 31 




25 














Proverbs 


i. 12 


26 


Deuteronomy xxxii. 22 




26 




ii. 18 
vii. 27 


26 

24 


I Sam. xxxviii. 14 




25 




ix. 18 
xxi. 16 


26 

26 


II Kings iv. 31 




152 




xxvii. 20 


26 


Job vii. 9 




23 




xxx. 16 


26 


xi. 8 


23 

26 


,26 








xiv. 13-14 


33 


Ecclesiastes ix. 10 


27 


xvii. 13-16 




25 


Canticles 


viii. 6 


26 


xix. 25-27 




33 








xxiv. 19 




32 


Isaiah 


v. 14 


26, 28 


xxvi. 5-6 




29 




xiv. 


23» 25, 


Psalm i. 5 




166 




xxv. 8 


30-32 
33 


vL 5 




26 




xxvi. 19 


33 


vii 6-8 




166 




xxviii. 1 ;, ] 


8 28 


ix. 


32. 


166 


xxxviii. 18 


27 


X. 




166 




xiv. 17 


73 


xvi. io-ii 




33 




li. 6, 8 


73 


xvii. 15 




33 




lvii. 9 


26 


xxx. 3 




23 








xxxi. 17, 22 




26 


Ezekiel 


xxxii. 17- 


-32 24, 


xlix. 14-15 


26 


,33 






25,29 


1. 




166 




xxxvii. 12- 


13 33 


lxxiii. 24-26 




33 








lxxxvi. 13 




23 


Daniel 


xii. 1-3 


33.168 


lxxxviii. 


26 


, 27 








ciii. 4 




33 


Hosea 


xiii. 14 


33 



194 



Index of Texts 



195 



Joel iii. 


12-16 166, 


Matthew xxvi. 29 


63 




167 


xx vii. 52 


53 151, 
154 


Amos ix. 


2 23 










Mark iii. 29 


79, 132, 142 


Habakkuk ii. 


5 26 


iv. 38 


151 






v. 41, 42 


152 


Matthew i. 21 


72 


viii. 35-38 


69, 73, 168 


ii. 13-21 


151 


ix. 1 


168 


iii. 12 


50 


ix. 43-47 


50,62, 78 


iv. 17 


72 


x. 17, 21, , 


30 78, 79 


v. 12 


80 


xi. 10 


60 


v. 18 


164 


xii. 18-27 


40, 87,88 


v. 22 


"5 


xiii. 7, 8, 24 


-27,32 168 


vi. 13 


60 


xiv. 25 


63 


vi. 19 


no 






vi. 20 


79 


Luke i. 32, 33 


60 


vii. 13 


in 


i. 70 


130 


vii. 22 


171 


i. 77 


72 


viii. 11, 


12,50, 59,62 


iii. 17 


50, "5 


x. 15 


170 


vi. 23 


80 


x. 22 


164 


ix. 24-27 


69, 73, 168 


x. 32, 


33> 10, no 


x. 15 


49 


xi. 22-24 


493. 170 


x. 20 


80 


xii. 32 


130, 132 


x. 25ft 


78, 102 


xii. 36 


170 


xii. 33 


79 


xiii. 22-50 


50, 63, 


xiii. 3, 5 


72 




[30, 164, 170 


xiii. 22-30 


50, 59, 62, 


xvi. 16-19 


48,64 




117 


xvi. 25-28 


69, 73, 168 


xiv. 14 


163 


xviii. 8-9 


78, 79, 115 


xv. 7, 10 


103 


xviii. 18 


64 


xvi. 8 


130 


xix. 16-21 


78, 102, in 


xvi. 9 


79 


xix. 28-29 


78, 170 


xvi. 22-31 


49> "5 


xxi. 43 


95 


xviii. 18, 22, 


3° 78, 79 


xxii. 13 


50 


xix. 10 


72 


xxii. 23-33 


40, 


xx. 27-39 


40 




87, 88, 163 


xx. 34 


87,130 


xxiii. S3 


, l li 


xx. 36 


88, 159, 163 


xxiv. 


50, 164, 168 


xxi. 9-1 1, 


25-28 168 


xxv. 3off 


5°, 6 3> 79. 


xxiii. 42 


64 


Ii3. 


115, 132, 170 


xxiii. 43 


ill 



196 



Index of Texts 



John 



Acts 



111. 






iii. 


16 




iii. 


17 




iii. 
iii. 


19 
36 




iv. 


14 




v. 


19- 


29 


vi. 


27 




vi. 


40, 


44 


vi. 


47 




vi. 

vi. 


54 
68 




ix. 


4 




ix. 

X. 


3 o 

28 




xi. 


II 




xi. 


22- 


25 


xii. 


17 




xii. 


24 




xii. 


25 




xii. 


48, 


So 


xiv. 


3 




xiv 


19 




xvii 


2, 


3 


xvii. 
xviii. 


24 
36 




ii. 


24, 


32 


iii. 


21 




v. 


31 




ix 


40, 


41 


X 


40 




xii 


• 7 




xiii 
xiii 

XV 


34 
46 
18 




xvii. 


18, 


3 1 



77, 



Romans vi. 22, 23 
viii. 11 



59 


7i 




77 




7i 




72 




76 




77 


x 53> 


163, 




171 




78 


99, 


169 




99 




77 




81 




27 




130 




81 




152 


163, 


169 




154 




158 


79» 


102 




78 


89, 


in 




89 


81 


. 93 




89 




61 




163 




130 




72 




152 




163 




151 




163 




82 




130 


163, 


172 


79 


,81 


157, 


160 



I Corinthians vi. 14 


163 


xiii. 8-13 


90, 


94, 


132 


XV. 


157 


XV. l8, 20 


I 5 I 


xv. 36-41 


158 


xv. 42-54 


159 


xv. 49 80, 88 


xv. 50 


64 


xv. 50, 51, 


52 




160 


II Corinthians iv. 18 


88 


v and v. 1 


80 


v. 2, 4 


160 


vii. 10 


72 


Galatians vi. 8 


77 


Ephesians i. 10 


80 


ii. 7 


131 


iii. 15 


80 


Philippians iii. 1 1 


163 


iii. 20, 21 


80, 


157, 


160 


Colossians i. 5 


80 


i. 26 


131 



I Thessalonians iv, 16, 17 



II Thessalonians i. 9 
ii. 16 



[72 

79 
75 



I Timothy i. 16 77 

ii. 2 47 

vi. 12, 16 82, 143 

II Timothy i. 10 2 

ii. 10 73> 75 



Index of Texts 



197 



II Timothy 


ii. 


18 




174 


II Peter 


i. 11 




60 




iv. 


18 


64 


,80 




ii. 4 




113 


Titus ii. 11 


-*3 




7i 


73 


I John 


i. 2; 


ii. 25 


82 


iii. 7 








78 


iii. 15 




76 














V. II, 


12 


81,99 


Hebrews v. 


9 






73 


Jude 


6 




JI 3 


vi. 


2 






79 




7 




79 


ix. 


12 






75 










ix. 


28 






73 


Revelation v. 


3 


80 














xii. 


7 


"3 


I Peter v. 10 






75 




XX. 


13 


154 



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